Starving the beast -- II
Speaking of beasts (see below), I had long had my own version of how the starvation theory of politics should be applied in Utah.
Stop building highways.
Instead of widening I-15 -- again -- or building Legacy Parkway or the Mountain View Corridor, at a financial cost of billions and an environmental and social cost impossible to calculate, the Utah Department of Transportation should stop being such an enabler and just stop building or widening highways.
When people figure out that they ought to work where they live, live where they work and demand expanded public transit -- because the commute has just become unbearable -- they'll make much wise use of our limited land and budget.
UDOT, of course, doesn't think that way. Drivers are their customers, and the customer is always right. They want highways, we build highways. And, when the UDOT folks were in to see The Tribune Editorial Board the other day, they brought up an angle I hadn't thought of before.
If the commute from, say, Herriman to downtown Salt Lake more than doubles in time from the current average of 40 minutes, UDOT reasons, the workers won't move downtown or find jobs in Herriman. They'll move to Summit Park, or Kamas, or some other place that may be further as the crow flies but closer in terms of commute time. Of course, enough people do that and, pretty soon, that commute will be unimaginably snarled, too, requiring more and wider highways for that trip.
So, while I'm trying to amend my Just Say No to Highways Theory, everybody who drives in western Salt Lake or Utah counties ought to be looking at the UDOT Web site devoted to the planning for the westside Mountain View Corridor highway project. There are hearings coming up, and lots of decisions to be made, including whether the new highway should be Utah's first significant toll road.
- Posted by George Pyle
Stop building highways.
Instead of widening I-15 -- again -- or building Legacy Parkway or the Mountain View Corridor, at a financial cost of billions and an environmental and social cost impossible to calculate, the Utah Department of Transportation should stop being such an enabler and just stop building or widening highways.
When people figure out that they ought to work where they live, live where they work and demand expanded public transit -- because the commute has just become unbearable -- they'll make much wise use of our limited land and budget.
UDOT, of course, doesn't think that way. Drivers are their customers, and the customer is always right. They want highways, we build highways. And, when the UDOT folks were in to see The Tribune Editorial Board the other day, they brought up an angle I hadn't thought of before.
If the commute from, say, Herriman to downtown Salt Lake more than doubles in time from the current average of 40 minutes, UDOT reasons, the workers won't move downtown or find jobs in Herriman. They'll move to Summit Park, or Kamas, or some other place that may be further as the crow flies but closer in terms of commute time. Of course, enough people do that and, pretty soon, that commute will be unimaginably snarled, too, requiring more and wider highways for that trip.
So, while I'm trying to amend my Just Say No to Highways Theory, everybody who drives in western Salt Lake or Utah counties ought to be looking at the UDOT Web site devoted to the planning for the westside Mountain View Corridor highway project. There are hearings coming up, and lots of decisions to be made, including whether the new highway should be Utah's first significant toll road.
- Posted by George Pyle
14 Comments:
Your idea of people working where they live and living where they work seems just too logical for the various powers involved in helping to influence such decisions in our country. So logical, in fact, that if such a policy became reality, there would be way too much money lost by these various powers. And, as Vice-Pres. Cheney says, Americans should not be expected to give up their life style or standard of living(or words to that effect). We deserve to have our suburban houses with lots of water-using Kentucky blue grass, the opportunity to be away from the hustle bustle of the city and, above all, the opportunity to drive long distances and help contribute to global warming, which is, of course, of questionable scientific validity. Just ask some of our notable politicians.
I just hope that the thoughts expressed make it out of the shadowy world of cyberspace and on to the ever-shinking printed page. This discussion is too basic for the general public to ignore.
i don't want to live where i work anymore than i want to eat where i defecate.
one solution is better cars and mass transit, not the european model of living aka squalor.
Of course there's lots of ways "to skin the cat" and I don't want to be forced to live where I work unless I want to but I might want to if 1 of the possibilities was to have a planned environment which made it desirable for people to live and work there. Somehow this sounds just too simple and elementary and I feel a bit foolish writing it. But, back to the cat. It can't be skinned until enough people accept the need for that to happen and it can't be skinned well unless lots and lots of people struggle to find the best ways to do it.
If I can't live in the country (rural place,) then I want my subdivision to, at least, be commerical free. Who the hell wants to live where they work. Get real. Instead of dealing with cities (started before automania) that have snarled transportation routes, we should act intelligently and plan for handling future traffic. Let's don't ignor the problem. Let's be proactive in solving it. Let's build highways for our kids.
It seems to me that a lot of the people in this country use black and white thinking when looking at problems. I've seen people in other countries apparently living quite enjoyably above their shop or behind it. It probably happens here too although I suppose a majority of people, especially here in the West, would prefer rural or commercial free living. I would but I'm in a condo community with commercial enterprises next tous and across the street. It's not a bad compromise for having relatively short trips to the gym(walking didtance), supermarket , etc. Since I'm partially retired, driving to work is not much of an issue. If we had more complete pub. trans. system, I'd have to drive less. So, to me, it's not a black and white issue. Sure, we need more highways in some cases, especially if we have more cars available that aren't using so much carbon fuel, we need better public transportation for those who want that for reasons of convenience or to help our society burn less carbon based fuel, we need more planned communities close to the hustle bustle of city centers for those who want to be "where the action is." Our kids maybe will need some new highways but if we keep building them and keep focusing mostly on automobile transportation, what will that look like? I'd like to keep more of our rural spaces. I like the wide-open spaces. To me, that's part of the charm of the West. How about throwing in some higher density living places--condos, apartments for low, mod. and high income people that might prefer this at certain stages of their lives? Aren't there lots of possibilities and lots of preferences?
Many would pre fer a yard in a quiet suburban or rural neighborhood but many wouldn't want that. Planning ought to explore the wide range of pssibilities and compare those possibilities with what is practical, possible and wanted by different groups of people.
I would agree that we should scale back highway construction. At the same time we need to give people a reasonable alternative to get from point A to B.
The current UTA TRAX system is a great system. The only problem with TRAX is that there just is not enough of it built. How many miles of highways do we have in Salt Lake county compared to miles of Trax line?
The TRAX system is fast, efficient and clean compared to highway and auto use. People complain constantly about the price of gas. If more of us could use the train system that runs on domestic produced electricity instead of oil from the middle east, the demand and the price for oil would be reduced.
So why do we not build mass transit as fast as we build highways? The Utah constitiution favors roads over everthing else. For example the gas tax MUST be spent only on building roads.
What if 20 percent of our gas tax was spent on new TRAX lines and 5 percent was spent on bike paths?
Several positive things would occur:
1) The air quality in SL county would improve.
2) The congestion on the roads would be reduced.
3) Demand for imported oil would be reduced.
4) People who bike to work would be in better physical condition.
I could go on but you get the idea.
Good points in Kyle's blog. I'd like to see more buses to and from Trax stations so we could get from neighborhoods to Sandy or downtown or wherever entirely on public trans. Maybe the buses could be more like large vans and run on natural gas. The way Trax is set up now it's very inconvenient and time-consuming to use from my location on the interface between Murray and Holladay. It's much simpler and a lot faster just to drive.
Please tell me how the young worker will afford to live in or anywhere near downtown SLC, which will continue to be the locus of much of the region's work (seat of various governments, yada, yada). Expenses would go up even more if you tried to push more people into downtown and have planned communities. It ain't just a moral issue about driving-polluting and having some grass where your kids can play vs. walking and transit and communal living.
I'm a young professional making decent money, with relatively little debt, but unless I buy a small, rundown condo, or move into generally undesirable neighborhoods with high crime rates, I can't afford to live near downtown.
The blog by the "young professional" makes a good point. I believe the term"gentrification" fits in this discussion. If I'm not mistaken, a number of depreciating homes in relatively run down areas in cities around the country have been purchased at relatively low prices, improved and sold at a profit or just moved into to the point where only reasonably well off people could afford to move into the now attractive neighborhood. Where I've seen this is Philadelphia. There young professionals seemed to be the ones who moved in with many of them raising their families there. Of course, this tends to leave out lower income people, in fact, sometimes forcing them out of their previosly inexpensive home and neighborhood, often one that had much more crime and other undesirable factors than the new "gentrified" neighborhood.
One thought is that there are other growing city centers in the Salt Lake Valley. I can't respond well to the above-mentioned blog but I wonder if, with enlightened, imaginative planning it's not possible to have a range of housing from relatively low up to higher levels built around the edge, or possibly in, cities like Murray(which will have a lot of new low income jobs as the new IHC center gets up and running) and even in SLC. It would be a shame to have the situation I"ve heard about in Park City and other resort towns where there's inadequate low price housing for lower wage earners.
At least in Salt Lake Valley, the options are increasing--better highways, Trax, planned communities like Sunrise out in the southwest valley.
Please, how 'bout some experts in community planning, transportation, community growth trends throw in their thoughts and expertise to this conversation.
George,
Your post reminded me of a survey in the Economist on traffic published in 1998. They describe the "law of constant travel-time budget." The "law" (which the Economist says is actually quite controversial) says that people have a budget for how long they are willing to spend on the road, just as they have a cash budget. If you cut the commute through new lanes or new roads, commuters will just move farther from the office until they have exhausted this travel time budget. I highly recommend reading the whole survey as it describes well the vast economic complexity of traffic problems and their mitigation. The article can be found at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=163351 (sub required).
Seems very unfair to make the Mountain View Highway a toll road as it will be used by the same type of drivers(rich and poor, commuters and commercial, business and pleasure, etc.), I assume, as any of the "free" highways around the valley. If it needs to be built then perhaps the gas tax should be increased to pay for it, although, especially now, I doubt that would be a very popular idea.
It is amazing that people miss the relationship between transportation and land use. The problem of development in the SL Valley isn't the roads only, it is the land uses that surround the roads. Generally speaking, the valley has developed with almost a complete seperation of land use, a neighborhood with only single family homes, commercial areas with no residential element, etc. There are also many neighborhoods that lack connectivity due to obstacles such as major roadways, canals, railroad tracks, etc. This development pattern forces people to travel in a car. There are many solutions, some better than others.
One would be to build larger and more roads. Not really feasible due to the cost and the fact that most of the existing roads cannot be expanded without taking private property to widen the roads. Also, sprawl would increase for the very reasons mentioned by the UDOT engineers.
A second would be for innovative zoning practices that incorporates different types of compatible land uses into an area. Neighborhood commercial uses are pretty unobtrusive and provide jobs for teenagers, retireees, and those that aren't looking for a career but instead a part time job to supplement the household income. They also reduce the average driving trip because a grocery store may be closer, the coffee shop may be within walking distance, or the pet groomer may be around the corner. Think the Avenues, Sugarhouse, or the 15th and 15th area in SLC. These places have high property values because of how they developed (good neighborhoods w/ qualtiy architecture, close to daily needs, close to jobs, etc.). There is no reason that these types of neighborhoods cannot be located in Sandy, Draper, West Jordan, Centerville, etc.
Expanding mass transit may be a solution, but the current density patterns do not adequately provide enough potential riders. With a change in land use patterns, mass transit becomes much more viable.
The only reasonable solution is to incorporate a combination of the above into a sustainable development pattern that allows people the choice of housing type, travel mode, job location, etc.
The land use patterns in the county almost require bigger and more roads. The only way to change the current transportation demand is through changes in land use patterns. A complete segregation of land uses is not sustainable and leads to more problems than it solves. Technology has reduced teh impacts that commercial uses have on neighboring residential uses. A change in land use patterns would negate the need for expanding roads.
A neighborhood with a mix of land uses provides people a choice of housing type, close proximity to daily needs (grocery stores, dry cleaners, pet groomer, etc.), provides jobs for teenagers, retirees, or others who may be looking to supplement the household income, promotes an active lifestyle by providing people the option to walk, bike, etc. and reduces the number of automobile trips required. Adding low intensity office types of uses brings in quality jobs and further advances the benefits listed above.
There are plenty of examples of this type of neighborhood in the valley (the Avenues, 15th and 15th, Sugarhouse) and there is no reason that these types of neighborhoods cannot happen in the suburbs. The suburban lifestyle is here to stay, we might as well make them a better place with more options for everyone.
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