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Sacramento Transportation Management Association
CA Households Could Save $6,400 per Year from Better Community Planning
New Report Shows Economic and Environmental Benefits of Reduced Sprawl
A new analysis released last week finds that building communities with access to transportation options, with housing closer to jobs, shopping, schools and parks - could save money, cut pollution, reduce our dependence on oil, and let us spend less time in cars and more time with our families.
The study assesses the economic, energy, health and land impacts of different options for accommodating California's population, which is expected to reach 60 million by 2050. The report analyzes the financial and environmental benefits of state, regional and local land use and transportation policies. The analysis finds Californians facing an enormous price tag in a "Business as Usual" future. People spend more time in their cars, traveling nearly 183 billion more miles and using over 6.5 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they would in a "Growing Smart" future that brings housing, jobs, and everyday needs closer together. Compared to the Business as Usual future, the Growing Smart future reduces annual household costs for gas, auto maintenance and household utility bills by 45% in 2050.
The study, "Vision California: Charting Our Future," was conducted by Calthorpe Associates, one of the nation's leading planning and design firms. It shows how changes in land use and infrastructure decisions can help Californians do all the following:
- Save $6,400 annually on auto and utility costs by driving less and living in homes that use less water and energy.
- Reduce the number of miles driven by 3.7 trillion miles by 2050, the equivalent of taking ALL cars off the roads for 12 years.
- Save 140 billion gallons of gasoline to 2050 by reducing miles traveled by passenger cars. That's the equivalent of two years of U.S. oil imports.
- Cities and counties save $4.3 billion annually on infrastructure costs by building more compact neighborhoods.
- California save enough water by 2050 to fill the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park more than 50 times, by building more compact communities and homes that require less water.
- California saves enough energy by 2050 to power EVERY home in the state for 8 years.
The Vision California analysis allows us to consider the economic, environmental and health benefits of our land use and transportation decisions in a coordinated fashion so we can build quality communities for all Californians."
"Decisions made now will haunt us for years to come if we stick to the status quo. This analysis drives home the enormous costs at stake for Californians," said Darrell Steinberg, President Pro tempore of the California State Senate and author of SB 375, California's historic smart growth law. "We can either grow smart at less cost while enjoying healthier, cleaner more livable communities, or, we can continue business as usual and watch our economy and our environment erode."
Under SB 375, each of California's regional agencies must meet benchmarks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles through land use and transportation development. The state is expected to release draft regional emissions targets by the summer, with a final vote in September. The bill was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2008 and supported by a coalition of unlikely supporters that included builders, developers, environmentalists, health advocates and government leaders.
"This is a great tool that will enable local governments and key regions in the state in their overall land-use planning. High speed rail has the potential to provide significant economic stimulus in many communities across California, and with a cohesive statewide high-speed rail system with complementary local planning, this collaboration can hugely benefit the future of our state." said Curt Pringle, Chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
"Charting our Future" is the first report from Vision California, an unprecedented effort funded by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, in partnership with the California Strategic Growth Council, to analyze the economic and environmental impacts of land use and transportation decisions on California's future. The report uses Rapid Fire, a new state-of-the-art analysis tool that tests the effects of land use and policy decisions across a wide variety of metrics. The report compares a "Business as Usual" scenario, which assumes a continuation of dispersed, auto-oriented development patterns, with a "Growing Smart" scenario, which assumes a more balanced housing mix and greater transportation options. Vision California's next steps include the development of detailed state-wide physical land use and transportation scenarios utilizing new mapping and analysis tools that will serve to inform policy decisions at the state, regional, and local levels.
For a copy of the report, go to www.visioncalifornia.org.
Obama Administration's Livable Communities Initiative (July 2009)
US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced an interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities to help improve access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment in communities nationwide.
The Partnership established six principles: provide more transportation choices; promote equitable, affordable housing; enhance economic competitiveness; support existing communities; coordinate policies and encourage investment; and value communities and neighborhoods.
Sacramento regional planning in the news (summary of a July 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal)
Sacramento has become one of the nation's most-watched experiments in whether urban planning can help people deal with high fuel prices, the housing problem to global warming.
"Smart-growth" planning principles are to cluster the places where people live with the businesses where they work and shop so that less travel means less fuel consumption and less air pollution. Several communities were built on those principles, such as Celebration in Florida, but they were often isolated experiments, connected to their surroundings mainly by car. Over the past 50 years, cheap gasoline supported developers building communities with bigger houses, further and further away from city cores which led to longer commutes.
Four years ago, just as oil prices began to climb, the six-county Sacramento region adopted a plan for growth through 2050 that kept some areas from development while concentrating growth more densely in others, emphasizing the "smart growth" principle of keeping jobs near homes.
The local governments in the region do not have to follow the "Blueprint," but the plan -- backed by citizens, politicians, developers and environmentalists -- seems to be working. Between 2004 and 2007, the number of projects with apartments, condominiums and town houses for sale in the region increased by 533%, while the number of subdivisions with homes on lots bigger than 5,500 square feet fell by 21%, according to housing-research firm Hanley Wood Market Intelligence.
Things were different during the 1990s, as new single-family homes filled the open spaces far from downtown. Traffic rose 66% from 1990 to 2003. In 2000, the American Lung Association ranked Sacramento 11th for the worst air pollution among U.S. cities -- although, with about 1.4 million people, it was 28th in population.
Because of its poor air quality, Sacramento risked losing its federal transportation funding so the the regional-planning agency, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), hired Mr. McKeever in 2001 to lead the region's cleanup effort. He brought with him an eclectic environmental résumé: ran a business that used a door-size fan to test homes for leaks of precious heated or cooled air, becoming an expert in siting houses so they got the most sun possible, saving on electricity; and he'd been a planning consultant, helping Portland, Ore., create a walking city with compact neighborhoods connected by buses, streetcars and light rail.
When Mr. McKeever arrived in California, gasoline was relatively cheap and developers were comfortable building subdivisions the way they always had. He knew he would need to be able to paint a detailed, realistic picture of what life in the area would be like in 2050 if the traditional pattern of plopping one house on one acre of ground far from the owners' jobs continued.
McKeever's staff collected information on all 750,000 pieces of property in the region: the number of housing units, people employed, and return-on-investment rates generated by building projects. They plugged those numbers into a database to be used with computer software that calculated the impact different kinds of buildings have on traffic, job growth and pollution.
In 2003, SACOG conducted workshops, introducing planning options to more than 5,000 people who got a chance to use the computer program as a planner would, adjusting the mix of buildings to see what would happen.
Developers were wary. The higher density was tantalizing, but they weren't sure how to get financing and permits or how to build and market the new communities.
"My first big policy direction was, 'You need to stop this Blueprint thing at all costs,'" recalls Dennis Rogers, a lobbyist with the North State Building Industry Association.
Mr. McKeever persevered, gliding between meetings with developers and environmentalists in a golf-cart-like neighborhood electric vehicle.
Gradually, the builders began to accept Mr. McKeever's argument that adding town houses, condos and apartments to the mix of single-family homes would expose them to more markets and protect them from a downturn in any particular one. At the same time, residents were becoming more open to alternatives to the typical suburban house thanks to what they were learning at the workshops.
"The building industry is one of the most customer-driven that you can find," says Marcus Lo Duca, a lawyer who has represented builders for 20 years. "You have to adjust what you do to meet what home buyers want."
Dave Morris, an area developer, became a convert when he attended a workshop where officials presented their forecast of what the region would look like in 50 years if it kept growing in the same way. On a big screen in front of hundreds of people, they flashed traffic and air-quality figures that showed "you would commute faster on a bicycle," says Mr. Morris. The quality of life for communities without jobs nearby would nose dive.
At the time, he was building two gated communities with single-family homes on one-acre lots. Mr. Morris is now working on a 171-loft project that will include shops and offices in downtown Woodland, a small city northwest of Sacramento near the university town of Davis. The site is near a courthouse, one of the main employers in town, as well as restaurants and coffee shops. It has access to public transit that can take residents to downtown Sacramento. The public library is just a few blocks away.
Number One Concern
A poll earlier this year by California State University, Sacramento, found that high gasoline prices were the Number One concern in the area and that 12 percent of respondents had changed jobs or moved in the past year to shorten their commute to work.
Matt Overmyer moved to a new compact development in Roseville and his commute is now 15 minutes, compared with the 45 minutes he drove from Folsom, a town he describes as "suburbia at its finest."
Mr. Overmyer's new neighborhood is at the western-most edge of Roseville, where cattle grazed not long ago. But unlike many of the typical suburban developments built on farmland surrounding Sacramento in previous years, his is designed around a "village square" with restaurants and shops. The square is a couple of blocks away from Mr. Overmyer's home and a school, which his daughter will attend, has already been built less than half a mile away.
Mr. Overmyer, 30 years old, now bikes to the grocery store, something he never did in Folsom. He also interacts a lot more with his neighbors because the houses in his new neighborhood are close together and share a back alley. Before, he and his wife had to drive at least a few miles to see friends. Mr. Overmyer says he's enjoying spending less time behind the wheel and "the bigger sense of community." He's also pleased to see that the houses around him are already selling for more than what he paid for his last year.
While the Blueprint is still only a guide and local governments have the final word on development, many have begun incorporating its principles into their local laws. Rancho Cordova has adopted a Blueprint-friendly development plan so residents will live in densely-packed town homes and small houses and can walk to work at nearby office parks. The light-rail line built to commute to Sacramento now serves as a tram for local residents.
"We're a suburb that wants to become a city," says Linda Budge, Rancho's mayor.
In the spring of 2008, the SACOG board took another major step by approving a $42 billion transportation plan designed to work with the Blueprint. Together, both are projected by 2035 to reduce the amount of driving per household by 8% and global-warming emissions per household by 12% from their 2005 levels.
Now, California's Transportation Department is offering grants to help other areas in the state create their own Blueprints. Two environmental groups have co-sponsored a bill in the state legislature encouraging other areas to follow Sacramento's example. Think tanks such as the Center for Clean Air Policy are lobbying to include Blueprint methods in the federal transportation bill, which is up for reauthorization next year.
Placer Vineyards
But Mr. McKeever, who became his agency's director in 2004, still has battles to fight. For example, Placer Vineyards, a 14,132-unit proposed housing development, is in a good Blueprint location, close to both Sacramento and the city of Roseville, which is a big job center. But the proposal doesn't meet the Blueprint standard of an average 10 housing units per acre, which would translate into a 21,631-unit project. That's the necessary density to accommodate its projected future population growth within the Blueprint's boundaries.
"If you don't build those 7,000 units there," Mr. McKeever says, "they will go somewhere else," potentially onto land that the plan called for remaining undeveloped.
Mr. McKeever negotiated with the project's developers to present two plans to the Placer County Board of Supervisors for approval -- the original plan, and the Blueprint version. But the board chose the developer's less-dense, original plan, citing area residents' concern about the traffic the denser development would generate. Aside from the density, Placer Vineyards will be Blueprint-compliant, with a bus transit center and trails and bike paths connecting homes to parks and schools, he says.
But without density, counters Terry Davis of the area Sierra Club chapter, smart growth doesn't work. His group joined the local Audubon Society to file a lawsuit against Placer County and the developers, charging them with destroying natural land with plans that "unnecessarily promote urban sprawl." The parties are in settlement talks.
Plans for Streetcar
Even projects that fully comply with the Blueprint have their problems. Mark Friedman, a local developer, is working on a mixed-use development across the Sacramento River from the California State Capitol, the heart of downtown. In his loftlike office, a retrofitted former Pontiac-dealership, Mr. Friedman points to a sleek architectural model to show how a streetcar would connect apartments, office buildings and retail, making cars unnecessary.
Except that without building housing first, there won't be enough people to justify the state and local money that will help finance a streetcar. And without the streetcar, the carless project doesn't work. "It's a chicken-and-egg situation," says Mr. Friedman.
Building in the heart of the city costs more than creating subdivisions in empty land on city outskirts, says Mr. Friedman. But with the rising price of gasoline driving up the cost of commuting, he and other developers are finding healthy demand for their city projects at a time when suburban sales are slumping.
Even though the area's housing market has been wracked by price drops of 25% in the last year and one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, Mr. Friedman says he already has sold nine of 28 town houses near downtown that he recently completed, and three more are under contract, "which is not bad considering the dismal state of the Sacramento real-estate market."
Mr. Morris, the developer, says the housing downturn is hurting the places that have the "dumbest growth. Smart growth works when the rest of it doesn't."
Link to Wall Street Journal video
City of Sacramento draft 2030 General Plan (July 2008)
The General Plan process began in 2004. Over the last four years, the City hosted more than 40 events and conducted a telephone survey to gather input for policy direction in the draft plan. Information received from more than 4,600 residents who attended these gatherings helped shape this document.
A general plan is a city's official statement regarding the extent and types of development needed to achieve it's physical, economic and social goals. It acts as a blueprint for not only growth, but the preservation of open space. Over the next 25 years, Sacramento can expect to grow by more than 200,000 residents. Planning for such growth is not only important, it is required by state law.
The Draft 2030 General Plan for the City of Sacramento is complete and available for viewing at www.sacgp.org. The public is encouraged to submit all comments on this document by 5:00 on July 31, 2008.
Please e-mail comments to akoch@cityofsacramento.org, or call Andrea Koch at (916) 808-1943. You may also send written comments to:
Andrea Koch
Planning Department
New City Hall
915 I Street, 3rd Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
The Draft Master EIR for the General Plan is also available at www.sacgp.org. Please submit all comments on this document by 5:00 on August 22, 2008.
Please submit all comments in writing to:
Mellanie Marshall
Associate Planner
City of Sacramento
Development Services Department
Environmental Planning Services
300 Richards Blvd., Third Floor
Sacramento, CA 95811
For questions regarding the Draft MEIR, please call Mellanie at (916) 808-8015 or e-mail her at mmarshall@cityofsacramento.org.
Following the public review period, city staff and consultants will prepare the final 2030 General Plan for adoption by the Sacramento City Council in late 2008.
Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) 2035
Transportation consistently ranks as one of the chief concern of residents on the Sacramento Region. The Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) 2035 will guide billions of dollars for transit, roads, neighborhood improvements, bike trails and other transportation related projects.
The next phase in building a regional transportation strategy will consist of
eight identical workshops held simultaneously throughout the Sacramento Region
on one night:
Tall Order: Moving the Region Forward
Thursday, November 16th
6 pm to 9 pm
All eight workshops (locations below) will be linked via satellite and include
region wide interactive polling technology As a participant, you will
shape our future transportation plan and influence our regional land-use
strategy by determining where to invest transportation dollars. Whether you
would like to see more transit options such as a streetcar in your downtown,
more bikeways, dedicated bus lanes, freeway expansion, etc. or just concerned
about our air quality, this interactive event will put your fingerprint on our
regional transportation plan.
RSVP at the
website or call Valley Vision at 916-325-1634. Don't forget to tell your
friends, family, and neighbors about the MTP TALL Order. It is free and
dinner and beverages will be served.
Locations
Sacramento (South) County
Pavilion in Elk Grove
9950 Elk Grove-Florin Road
Elk Grove
Sacramento (North City)
Inderkum High School
2500 New Market Drive
Natomas
Sacramento (East) County
Folsom Community Center
52 Natoma Street
Folsom
Sacramento (Central) County
Memorial Auditorium
1515 J Street
Sacramento
The Sacramento region's Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP)
is a 23-year plan for transportation improvements in our six-county region. Based on projections for growth in population, housing and jobs, the MTP is key to the quality of life and economic health of our region. To see results of workshops, and workshops for your area, go to the MTP website.The MTP 2030 will be the first MTP for the Sacramento region to pro-actively link land use and transportation needs. Development of the MTP will include an 18-month public priority setting process to identify a list of transportation improvement projects to best meet the needs of our region as a whole.
Ensuring convenient access to jobs, school, entertainment, recreation and critical services such as banking, medical care and shopping will require a transportation system of roads, transit, bikeways and sidewalks to manage our diverse needs.
Regardless of city-or county-designated transportation projects, local improvements must be included in our regional MTP to receive state and federal funding. The last MTP for 2025 proposed using $22.5 billion in transportation funds to operate, maintain and expand the region's transportation system. Expenditures included: $2.5 billion for state highway improvements, $3 billion for state highway maintenance, $2.5 billion for transit improvements, $5 billion for transit operations, and $5 billion for local road improvements.
SACOG is the Metropolitan Planning Organization responsible for developing the state and federally required MTP every three years in coordination with the 22 cities and six counties in the greater Sacramento region. Under memoranda of understanding, long-range transportation plans in El Dorado and Placer Counties are incorporated into the MTP.
Federal law requires the MTP to conform to air quality goals for the region, satisfy financial constraints such that all proposed projects can be reasonably funded, and undergo extensive public review. State law further requires the MTP process include careful environmental analysis and review.
The MTP 2030 is being developed by SACOG in collaboration with transportation planning agencies, air districts, and transit operators throughout the region. The most active partners include the El Dorado County Transportation Commission, the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency, the Sacramento Air Quality Management District, the Sacramento Regional Transit District, the Sacramento Transportation Authority, and the Yolo County Transportation District.
SACOG is preparing a series of issue papers during the Fall 2005 to begin the public dialogue on key transportation issues to consider in the MTP 2030. Input from the Board of Directors and stakeholders from the Board advisory committees are helping shape the information provided through these technical papers.
Draft issue papers on transit operations, road maintenance and system retrofits have been completed and available for download. Two to three papers each month will be presented to the Transportation & Air Quality Committee and to the SACOG Board through January 2006. Papers on road expansions, transit expansions, and freight/goods movement are being prepared for November. Read more...
For more information, check the SACOG web site.
The Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) has issued its own long-range and land-use transportation plan which reduces more traffic and sprawl than the Sacramento Area Council of Governments' "Preferred Alternative." ECOS says the Blueprint effort doesn't go far enough to protect the region from worsening air quality and the other effects of increased traffic that are expected as some 1.7 more people join the regional population by 2050.
Both proposals describe how $1 billion a year in transportation construction cash could be spent. Both are designed to improve the region's declining transportation mobility and air quality.
ECOS calls for development and transportation construction in existing urban areas -- instead of building into open space and farmland. The plan includes an underground light-rail system for downtown Sacramento, a prohibition on developing gated communities, parking fees for suburban work centers, a gas tax of $1 per gallon and elimination of proposed beltways on the Sacramento region's outskirts.
ECOS is wants to cut auto use to half of all trips, down from about 90 percent now. The group developed their plan with the help of University of California Davis professor Robert Johnston and a grant from the Mineta Transportation Institute. Johnston, a professor with UC Davis' Department of Environmental Science & Policy, and a computer-model guru, used an advanced transportation modeling program to figure how some of the strategies of the ECOS vision would work. The software differs from SACOG's in that SACOG's simply places land uses on the regional map. His method places a whole transportation system and shows how land uses would develop from that.
ECOS's vision calls for limiting growth to the region's "greenfield" areas, discouraging automobile driving and emphasizing the development of alternative transportation systems, rapid transit, biking and walking. To achieve these goals, ECOS first proposes that cities and counties in the region enact strong boundaries to growth, similar to Sacramento County's Urban Services Boundary. There would be no south-area expressway linking Folsom with Elk Grove, and for Placer Parkway -- a route that would link Highway 65 in the Roseville area with Highway 70/99 near Sacramento International Airport.
And there would be no freeway widening and expansions into the region's now undeveloped areas. This would include not building more high-occupancy-vehicle lanes. Instead, such lanes would be carved from existing freeway lanes, and their use limited to cars with three or more passengers, compared to two passengers today.
Freeways would be limited to four lanes maximum, including lanes for high-occupancy vehicles. Transportation money would be spent maintaining existing roads, and improving sidewalks, bike lanes, freeway interchange overpasses and other infrastructure to better serve pedalers and pedestrians.
Transportation construction and development would instead take place in existing urban areas. Cities and counties would push for high-density housing and mixed-use development, designed to encourage walking and transit use. Among other things, approval of cul-de-sacs and gated communities would be forbidden, in order to create more walkable street systems. And to create more infill development for bicyclers and walkers, "underutilized" urban land, including vacant retail centers, would be redeveloped as mixed-use projects.
At the same time, stop signs, traffic calming, bus shelters and other measures that make moving around more "comfortable" for walkers, bikers and bus riders would become priority items.
Also, to discourage automobile travel, parking requirements for new commercial development would be reduced, and most future work-center parking would be inside buildings, rather than in sprawling parking lots. Many existing sprawling parking lots now near transit lines would be converted to mixed-use developments.
Workers would be charged for parking -- $1 per hour in suburban work centers, $2 for more urban work centers. Parking at high schools would be reduced, and students would pay for parking.
Cars would be banned in Old Sacramento, which would become an example of pedestrian-friendliness. People would walk into the area from perimeter parking garages.
Fast buses: To help make all of these things work, the bus system would become far more efficient. Bus-rapid-transit systems would operate on dedicated lanes and be able to control traffic lights to their advantage. The waiting time for a mainline bus would, in some cases, be cut to as little as seven minutes during daylight hours as buses move along at average speeds of around 30 mph. The Blueprint's preferred scenario would also rely on bus-rapid-transit, but to a lesser degree, Mogavero said.
Shuttle buses would serve residential areas, picking up commuters, the elderly and disabled. Bicyclists would get their own dedicated system, allowing easy, safe travel in urban areas.
The current light-rail system would be put underground in the downtown Sacramento area, allowing light-rail cars to move from stop to stop at speeds akin to bus-rapid-transit. And a "historical trolley" system would move workers and residents across Tower Bridge and around the downtown area and the riverside portion of West Sacramento.
Other ECOS proposals include:
* Incentives for spreading the use of hybrid engines to all kinds of vehicles.
* Increasing the gas tax every two to three years to encourage use of other energy sources.
* Dedicating portions of existing roads for the sole use of light rail and bus-rapid-transit.
The ECOS plan is based on the following transportation elements:
* A very strong bus-rapid-transit system that includes using one lane of any
six- to eight-lane road exclusively for the buses.
* Elimination of new freeway and freeway widening, except that some
bus-rapid-transit lines were allowed to go under or over some of the busiest
intersections.
* Very "tight" suburban growth boundaries, tighter even than the strongest
Blueprint growth scenario.
* A gas tax of $1 per gallon and parking charges for work centers limited to $6
a day in the Sacramento central business district and $2 elsewhere.
Johnston ran six scenarios, starting with a "base-case" scenario showing growth continuing with current transportation and development planning methods. The remaining five scenarios showed the impact of the ECOS measures in increasing strength.
Under the base case approach, the six counties experienced 11.5 million vehicle miles traveled during the morning peak traffic period. With all of the ECOS measures inserted for the final scenario, mileage dropped 24.5 percent to 8.6 million.
* Walking increased to 13.2 percent of all trips from 9.3 percent.
* Driving single-occupant vehicles dropped from 36.5 percent of all trips to
24.4 percent.
* Transit use rose to 16.3 percent from 4.8 percent.
* Bike use rose to 9.7 percent of trips from 7.1 percent.
Considering actual automobile operating costs and the value of time lost drivers gained $3.6 million per day under the ECOS approach and lost $145,380 daily under the base case.
The
SACOG Blueprint Program "preferred alternative"
The Sacramento Area Council of Governments Blueprint Program has developed a
land-use plan for growth in the six-county Sacramento region that could
dramatically change the region's lifestyle, including the way we get around.
To handle the 1.7 million more people and 840,000 new homes projected for the
region by 2050, this plan, called the "preferred alternative," calls for
higher-density, mixed-use development in and near existing urban areas.
Developed through research, community outreach and consensus-building from 2002-2004, the preferred alternative will generate far less traffic congestion than will the current approach to urban planning. Current zoning and growth patterns will take urban sprawl into the region's surrounding farm land and the region's system of housing, retail, service outlets, work centers, roadways and transit systems will become increasingly unworkable.
Under the preferred alternative, the Sacramento region's habit of building large-lot houses in an endless sprawl across the countryside would be blunted. Instead, communities would voluntarily focus on building small-lot, mixed-use, "infill" communities, many of them in older neighborhood commercial strips. Among other things, the percentage of attached and small-lot new homes built would increase to 70 percent, double the current level.
Therefore it is crucial, says SACOG, a government agency that oversees the region's transportation funding, that the region's transportation system be done right to avoid massive congestion. As much as $1 billion a year will be spent on the region's in transportation infrastructure for decades to come, but the alternative proposal will use that money in a much more innovative way.
Transportation systems being investigated include:
- A more controlled traffic light system with traffic lights synchronized to allow cars to travel without hitting red lights, speeding up and decongesting traffic flow.
- Electric message signs may be dramatically increased to warn drivers to avoid accidents and other obstructions ahead and guide them to a fast detour.
- Screens to hide the crash from other drivers to prevent the traffic-clogging habit of rubber-necking at accident scenes.
- Cars outfitted with radar-controlled brakes that automatically engage when the radar senses a crash is imminent. That means fewer delays from accidents. It also means cars can safely travel closer, again speeding traffic flow.
- Drivers in a hurry may be able to shift into the fast lane or a car-pool lane, even though only one person is in the car. Their cars will be outfitted with transponders, sending signals to a monitor. The drivers will get a bill for the lane's use. Early versions of such systems are now in place at Bay Area bridges.
- Trucks or other vehicles that travel a considerable amount may be fitted with global positioning systems that record their mileage. They would be billed per road usage to help maintain roads.
- Shuttle systems would drive off main bus routes into neighborhoods, stopping for passengers at homes. Residents would be able to call to get the shuttle to stop at their homes. A similar system is now being tried in Citrus Heights, and downtown Sacramento also has a shuttle.
- More car-pool lanes in existing urban areas, while few or none would be built in the outskirts.
- Creation of more light rail might be displaced or outpaced by the far-less-expensive bus systems, which do not require extensive acquisition of right of ways, massive construction and pricey vehicles to work.
One of the more fascinating things to emerge from SACOG's planning effort is that walking and biking will almost surely be seen as contributive transportation technologies. Attractive, usable trailways are a crucial step toward making overall transit in high-density communities practical. The trick would be to make it easy, maybe even fun, to bike to a store, post office, work or other destination from home. That would be done, said the planners, by designing attractive, mixed-use communities.
SACOG is the designated regional transportation planner, charged with envisioning the freeways and other main transit needed. The agency also requests the construction funding from federal and state agencies. SACOG, for instance, planned the $23 billion in additions to the regional highways and so on that were to be built between 2002 and 2025.
The base-case approach -- simply building more roads to keep up with sprawl -- has dominated community planning since the late 1940s, when the mobility created by mass ownership of automobiles allowed housing to be built in sprawling suburbs that were distant from stores, work centers or government services. If this practice were continued, worsening congestion and air quality could prompt the federal government to cut off the dispersal of transportation construction money.
Driving would become a nightmare. SACOG figures that if growth continued as usual, each household would spend an average of 81 minutes per weekday driving, up 26 percent from 64 minutes now. Under the preferred alternative, the daily minutes would drop to 62, despite the population growth.
SACOG provides more reasons to enact its preferred alternative:
- Currently, SACOG estimates that 6.9 percent of the public's trips are now walking or biking. Under the base-case scenario, 5.5 percent of trips would be walking or biking. With the preferred alternative, the figure nearly doubles to 13 percent.
- In the base-case pattern, 660 square miles, or 28.7 million acres, of open space will be developed. The preferred alternative would use 304 square miles, or 13.2 million acres.
- 70 percent of the populace will live in walkable areas under the preferred alternative, compared to 34 percent in the base case. Currently less than 34 percent live in such areas.
Sprawl: "Unregulated growth expressed as careless new use of land and other resources." Delores Hayden, A Field Guide to Sprawl
New
Recruits in the War on Sprawl
By ALAN EHRENHALT
WASHINGTON -- Talk to John Williams for five minutes, and he will begin
preaching to you about the importance of sidewalks. "We have to
interconnect people again," he says. "We have to go back and re-create the
neighborhood, all the things that humans feel comfortable in. We can't
keep putting shopping centers in the middle of cornfields. We need
sidewalks, and we need to get people out on those sidewalks."
There's nothing startling about those ideas. Lots of people talk that way
these days: architects, environmentalists, urban planners, even vice presidents
seeking promotion.
But John Williams is none of those things, not even close. He's a suburban
Atlanta real estate developer who has accumulated a large fortune in the past 20
years by building garden apartments along freeways all over the Sunbelt and
enticing affluent young professionals to live in them.
He isn't giving back the money, but he is
repenting, at least in a way. Having profited mightily from sprawl, he has
declared war on it. Williams is a born-again New Urbanist, and everything
he builds nowadays comes straight out of the New Urbanist tool kit --
high-density, mixed-use projects with stores on the ground floor, apartments
above, transit stops as close as possible and sidewalks to stroll on.
One big-time developer turning against sprawl in one city is a small piece of
news. The big news is that Williams is no maverick, bucking the
local real estate establishment. In Atlanta, he is the real estate
establishment. He is the chairman of the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of
Commerce. When he talks wistfully about the need to re-create the European town
square in urban America, he is expressing sentiments that have spread through
his entire business community with remarkable speed and intensity.
Everybody in Atlanta seems to be against sprawl now -- developers, bankers,
utility companies, all the interests that have profited from it for five
decades. Highways and mega-malls and parking lots have become politically
incorrect, and this has happened so fast that those who have long argued against
them can hardly believe the change. "You think back two years," says
John Sibley, chairman of the environmentalist Georgia Conservancy, "and the
change in the mind-set is stunning."
A few weeks ago, a law called the Regional Transportation Act passed the Georgia
Legislature amid desultory debate that belied its profound implications.
To fight sprawl in metropolitan Atlanta, the state has effectively given
Governor Roy Barnes powers that none of his 49 counterparts in America possess.
The law places Governor Barnes at the head of a sprawl-fighting superagency that
can practically dictate land-use decisions all over the metropolitan area.
It can tell the state Transportation Department not to build a highway. It
can tell a county not to allow a new shopping mall within its borders. If
it wants to, it can build and operate a mass transit system in any of the
jurisdictions surrounding Atlanta. It can then force those jurisdictions
to pay for it by threatening to take away their state financing.
There are 15 members of this superagency, but there is no disputing where the
power lies. The Governor can hire and fire any of them at will.
It's only half in jest that state capital cynics are saying G.R.T.A. doesn't
stand for Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, it stands for "Give Roy
Total Authority."
Among those still trying to come to terms with
this extraordinary development is the Governor himself. He campaigned
against sprawl when he won the office last fall, and he wrote the bill that
created his new powers. But he still seems a little shocked to have been granted
them. "If two years ago you had told me you would have a governor who
would propose something like this, I'd have said no governor would be that
foolish," he says. "But that's what we've done. What I
underestimated was that sprawl can be a pretty good political issue. You had a
public that was ready."
But what made the public ready? What persuaded a freeway-loving,
edge-city-building boom town like Atlanta to impose the equivalent of martial
law on its transportation policies?
One answer is dirty air. Atlanta's smog, most of it caused by automobiles, has placed the entire 13-county metropolitan region out of compliance with the Federal Clean Air Act, and until a plan is drawn up for dealing with that problem, all Federal money for new highway projects is frozen. That's no small issue. But by itself, it could not have created the G.R.T.A. -- land-use planning and New Urbanism won't have a dramatic impact on the region's air quality, especially in the short run.
A better explanation is traffic. The
residents of metro Atlanta currently drive an average of 35 miles a day to and
from work -- more than their counterparts in any other big city on the planet.
Their median commuting time is 31 minutes, far above the national average, and
the projection for two decades from now is 45 minutes. As
Governor Barnes puts it, "People in Atlanta are just tired of sitting in cars."
The Chamber of Commerce also worries that once Atlanta develops a national
reputation for gridlock, businesses won't want to locate there anymore.
Existing companies won't want to expand. The whole engine of metropolitan
prosperity, built to a large extent on real estate itself, will sputter.
As Yogi Berra might say, Atlanta will become so crowded that nobody will go
there.
That is a disturbing enough prospect to turn even a dyed-in-the-wool suburban home builder into an incipient New Urbanist, and it helps explain why John Williams and the metropolitan business leadership were prime movers behind the G.R.T.A.
What it will mean in the end nobody knows, not even the Governor. It is widely assumed that Mr. Barnes and his Council of 15 will decree an expansion of mass transit, discourage new residential subdivisions in some outer suburban counties and smile on pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use development of the sort that Mr. Williams and many of his colleagues now specialize in. Whether the physical environment of freeways, shopping malls, smog and gridlock will change noticeably as a result is another question. The whole Atlanta region, like its counterparts throughout much of the United States, was essentially built for the automobile; how to design it in accordance with other values, even gradually, is still a puzzle.
What is safe to predict is that something very
much like the G.R.T.A. debate will soon surface elsewhere. Public
officials and citizen activists and chambers of commerce throughout the country
have begun to talk about sprawl in terms they used to reserve for pornography or
Communism. The dangers of uncontrolled real estate
development are now taken for granted in almost every state legislature from
Montpelier to Phoenix. And the national poll numbers against sprawl are so
overwhelming that Vice President Al Gore has taken what is inherently a local
issue and made it the focus of a Presidential campaign.
The agitation for control of land use has grown so loud that free-market think tanks have begun a rhetorical assault against it in recent weeks, mailing out a blizzard of studies, surveys and position papers arguing that sprawl is actually a good thing, and its critics merely a cadre of selfish New Urbanist snobs bent on denying others the comfortable life style they themselves enjoy.
But they're too late. The American people are coming to the conclusion that sprawl is to blame for a good deal of the discontent that attaches to end-of-century middle-class life. And this change of mind will shake up politics in many places in the first decade of the 21st century.
Alan Ehrenhalt is the executive editor of Governing magazine and the author, most recently, of "The Lost City."
