TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR: The suburb of King Farm, pictured here, included plans for a light rail transit line to run down this street--a plan that has been opposed by some locals.
Image: Courtesy of EPA
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The new kind of suburb wasn't supposed to be so suburban. Packed into 180 hectares, King Farm in Rockville, Md., filled in a patch of lingering farmland just outside Washington, D.C. The village planners left a broad swath of green down the main road, dubbed King Farm Boulevard, that sported along its sides a mix of different types of housing and amenities, such as shops, within walking distance. Down the middle of the boulevard would be the forthcoming train system that would efficiently shuttle new residents to the Washington Metro's Red Line, thereby linking them with the regional public transit system.
As a result of the new design sensibilities, the Congress for the New Urbanism highlighted King Farm in 2008 as an "exciting" development, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited it as an example of "smart growth." The planned community checked off all the boxes of the "new urbanist" manifesto: a mix of housing types paired with centrally located amenities, designed for pedestrians and cars as well as public transport–oriented.
Instead of embracing that transportation vision, however, the residents of King Farm and the Rockville City Council recently rejected the proposed transit plan—specifically, any light-rail line that would travel down the swath of green explicitly designed to host such a system.
Transit-ready development may mean nothing if local residents are not ready for public transit. And King Farm residents seem prepared to fight the State of Maryland, which bears ultimate responsibility for the decision and still wants to route any transit system through the community. The battle highlights one of the challenges facing so-called new urbanism as it attempts to steer American life away from the car, which has dominated city planning since at least the 1950s.
The new urbanist movement disdained the automobile-centric sprawl, which locked residents into the use of polluting cars for even the most basic trips. The logic of sprawl saw cities eat up a larger and larger share of the surrounding real estate, fueling habitat destruction, smog from tailpipe emissions, runoff from impermeable pavement and other environmental ills.
Communities inspired by a return to the walkable cities of most of human history have sprung up from coast to coast, including places where one might least expect it, such as Los Angeles, Denver and even Salt Lake City, the latter of which has shifted growth patterns away from sprawl. But, as the example of King Farm shows, new urbanism can devolve into the kind of central planning criticized by the very founders of the urban planning school of thought—and can also result in what is essentially a style without substance. "It is more about lifestyle than ecologically sound cities," says sociologist Saskia Sassen of Columbia University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences panel on cities.
Planner and developer Jonathan Rose of Jonathan Rose Companies of New York City echoes that sentiment. Not owning a car reduces consumption, he notes, but "that reduction in consumption has to come with an increase in happiness. If it comes with suffering—it takes three buses to get where you want to go—then it's not sustainable."
Such suffering seems to be the case for residents of King Farm, some of whom would choose the freedom to be stuck in Beltway traffic rather than face the peril of a community divided by train tracks. "We've come a long way from an era where many cities produced affordable housing through what gets endearingly called 'drive 'til you qualify' strategies," says Uwe Brandes, vice president of initiatives at the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit research and education think tank focused on land use. "The area of caution associated with transit-oriented development is there's a danger that these areas in cities can become economic and social enclaves. That's a yellow, blinking light."
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60 Comments
Add Comment"The area of caution associated with transit-oriented development is there's a danger that these areas in cities can become economic and social enclaves."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow did Mr. Brandes miss that all new subdivisions are socio-economic enclaves? They are even built and sold within defined price ranges.
The question is not that of NEW subdivisions where people willingly wall themselves into the enclave of their choosing with others who are more or less the same shade of pale. The problem is with retrofitting an existing subdivision with a means of transportation which might allow another socio-economic strata in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKing Farm residents are basically saying "We don't want no people who can't afford no cars here."
The "suffering" from not going by car can easily be counterbalanced by positive factors of communal transport. For example the freedom to read while taking the ride and not having to waste time and money on parking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe balance can also be tipped by increasing the suffering for the drivers. For example by tollbooths subsiding communal tickets. Stockholm has succeeded well in this. I lived there for 15 years and never saw a reason to get a car. Taking a taxi perhaps 50 times a year is much cheaper than owning a car.
"Transit-ready development may mean nothing if local residents are not ready for public transit."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElitist fluff. 'Not ready' means what? Ignorant and unsophisticated? This article reflects disdain for actual democracy. Hint...most folks enjoy hopping in their car to go to the grocery store or to visit a friend across town.
Ten-to-one odds this 'developer' takes taxis in New York and flies in fuel guzzling airplanes.
The practice of urban planning to optimize public transportation or foot traffic is novel and indisputably a good thing for most city dwellers. Reducing transportation costs for residents, as well as pollution and other negative aspects of vehicle ownership/use, are absolutely good things. The danger of this line of thinking, however, lies in exactly what Andreas Ericson mentioned – the notion that city planners and government officials should encourage residents to abandon their personal vehicles by increasing the degree of suffering associated with owning and operating one. Furthermore, due to the nature of how our government works, it is highly likely that populous areas where a shift to public transit would work will attempt to push their agenda out into the more rural areas, increasing the cost of vehicle ownership for those residents without providing a viable alternative. Not to mention the fact that many Americans have widely dispersed family and friends who live outside areas likely to be covered by the local transit grid. Forcing Americans to give up their personal vehicles and shift to public transit would dramatically reduce tourism and more strongly focus us into ethnocentric, geography based, social groups. This will hurt our economy, diminish our national sense of unity (what little is left of it, anyway), and most importantly reduce the freedoms and liberties of our citizens by allowing the government to control yet another aspect of our lives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood initiative; localities which wish to implement such a plan should be encouraged to do so, given the following conditions: 1) Residents must vote to enact such a urban planning scheme. 2) Any “new urbanist” type system must be limited to only the city limits, by law. 3) Residents must be permitted to own a vehicle without penalty for those occasions when public transit won’t suffice – encourage people to reduce their driving through positive encouragement, don’t scare them into it by making it prohibitively expensive.
The only way that american suburbanites will stop being so dependent on their cars is a steep increase in the price of petrol, as has occured in the past three years. A major difference between Europe and the US is that in Europe petrol is heavily taxed, in some cases almost doubling the price at the pump. This has led europeans to be content with smaller, more efficient cars and rely heavier on public transit. In some cases this has been coupled with further anti-incentives, such as inner city toll posts, heavy pedestrianisation of city centres etc. This had the extra benefit of reducing atmospheric pollutants and of creating new open, public spaces that can be enjoyed by all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If it comes with suffering—it takes three buses to get where you want to go—then it's not sustainable'"; Now let's suppose for the moment that the problem with 'three buses" is that they are too far apart in time and travel in too circuitous a fashion so they travel much farther than one would in a car. Further, lets suppose that there are various “transit centers’ in town, where many bus routes converge to ‘assist’ in the transfer process. Given that there are only so many buses (and drivers and mechanics), because there is only so much money for such, wouldn’t it be wise to limit the bus route miles by making them straighter and not having ‘transit centers’ (which ‘bend’ the routes to convergence points (like downtown, etc). In Austin, TX about 50% of our routes diverge from another route at one transit center only to re-converge at another transit center. THIS IS REDUNDANCY FOLKS! Its Transit101, but it has never been taught. I reduced the route miles in Austin by more than 3x, reducing the time between buses (headway) to an average of 9 minutes, instead of the present 27 minutes. My actual headways are 11, 7 and 5 minutes, all prime numbers and respectively for non-downtown or University (11-min) , Downtown and University (7-min) and collector routes (5-min) that connect the other routes and require no fare to board (to assist in its tight schedule maintenance). The topology is system of ladder networks with the 5-minute connectors being the long railings, and the 7 and 11-minute routes being the rungs. Its not difficult folks; just get your head out of your tukus and think outside what we have now. And never compare your bus system to others in the US and think yours is OK; compare your system to what is possible… Simulate in SW!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs is seen here it's very possible but having it happen is another thing altogether. Not to mention most of the suburbs being put up now (at least where I live) don't have sidewalks and there's no way for buses to get into most of these areas because of the road configurations. Indeed the most prominent feature of the houses in these areas is the multi-car garage in front.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the notion that city planners and government officials should encourage residents to abandon their personal vehicles by increasing the degree of suffering associated with owning and operating one."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey're not trying to increase suffering, they're just trying to incorporate the true costs that operating a vehicle imposes on society. People driving cars get a feee pass to emit pollution into the local air and clog up the streets with traffic. People who bike, walk or take public transit do not contribute to these problems, yet they have to deal with all the costs. If you use tolls to decrease traffic in areas and use the funds to build and operate alternative transportation options, this is the most fair way to deal with the problem.
"Furthermore, due to the nature of how our government works, it is highly likely that populous areas where a shift to public transit would work will attempt to push their agenda out into the more rural areas.."
Do you seriously believe this and all the other "slippery slope" nonsense you posted? Actually, given how our government works, a small, vocal minority of voters, probably funded and organized by the individuals/corporations that benefit the most from urban sprawl and unsustainable consumption, complain and lobby. This gets a small, vocal minority of lawmakers to do everything they can to keep the government from doing ANYTHING to solve the problem.
As for the article, it seems strange that all these people move into a transit-ready community and somehow, the key piece of infrastructure needed to get the whole thing to work properly gets voted down. Sounds kind of suspicious...
sault, I like to think that post WWII infrastructure has made me 'suffer' to walk. I haven't owned a car in years and refuse to EVER do so, but it does hurt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo think the people moved in because it looks bucolic, and is; and of course the car infrastructure, I mean car-coddling infrastructure was also there. Austin's new airport redevelopment is New Urban and its alleys in the back of each house actually increases the connections to car-ways 2x over 1945 to 2000 suburbs. It, I was old, has real pedestrian only pathways, but it was only a park with houses on two sides. Hell, in pre-WWII East Austin (the poor side of town) I see Ad Hoc REAL pathways because many cannot afford cars.
I think, in time, there may have to be new pedestrian developments for real transit oriented development, or more specifically, real walkable developments to be created. You may have to make pedestrians the number one accommodation. Of course you could just optimize the bus systems, but I doubt your ready to talk about that, nor would I want you to, until you have done the analysis, or looked at mine.
BTW, its telling that my 2000 version of MS Word doesn't recognize the word WALKABLE or CARFREE.
RHoltslander, I am very saddened by your situation. In Austin the old style suburban model has been replaced by more New Urbam models but, gladly, the only development now is in the old inner city. In spite of the economic downturn there is development in town. Also, rental demand is WAY up, why non-rental demad is WAY down. 'Was hoping this was universal in all US cities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUrban planners are totally out of touch with reality. Or maybe they just hate the idea of personal schedules and personal preferences. People need to get places on their individual schedules and during family/other emergencies and last minute spontaneous outtings. None of that can happen with regulated transit systems. We already have a mass transit system that meets all of those needs, it's called the personal automobile. As a current victim of urban planning I have a lot to say about planners who cannot conceive of how many personal options are deleted with a bureaucratic approach to movement and travel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe completely agree that community support for all aspects of <a href="http://monarchrh.com/about_new_urbanism.php"> New Urbanism</a> is one of the biggest obstacles. Suburban lifestyle is so ingrained in how we live that it is hard to transfer to a strong focus on public transit. We'd love to see the residents of King Farm support the project in its entirety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFolks by the tens of millions make a decision live in the suburbs. They can individually decide to commute or not and to use a vehicle or not. They can also individually decide where they want their transportation taxes to go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGovernmnet planners....bugger off.
There are neighborhoods that were planned by interfering social 'experts'. Today we call them 'ghettos'.
BTW, its telling that my 2000 version of MS Word doesn't recognize the word WALKABLE or CARFREE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not alone. There are plenty of archaic mindsets out there that refuse to accept those words and concepts.
Absolutely. The market has chosen the suburbs. And soon, I think its already begun (just another mortgage straw that broke the economy's back), they will be left because only the rich will be able to afford the fuel to cover such distances. Or are you expecting a technological miracle to occur? It might. But I don't see it, unless we can recover, and within 20-years begin at production levels, frozen methane. Do you see another energy source for 30 mile plus per day travel? Narrow vehicles are required for highway speed optimization, yet we have NEVER seen them before. (Why narrow cars geojellyroll? And why highway and not the city?) Seems the market doesn't think of the future. Of course, I get it. The market is decided by people and people are short sighted idiots. And they are colored by only what they can see before them. You think people are rational? I went to school with these people, and even most of the smart ones aren't rational. Example; Shakespeare was smart, right? Would you trust him to design a transit system?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich brings us back to your most glaringly irrationality; Why are you assuming transit as designed and put in practice in the US is rational or more specifically, optimized. The regional planning masters programs do not cover analysis much more synthesis of transit design. But you didn't even ask the question. And neither does anyone else. We are the monkey men.
Tell me a little, geojellyroll, about energy utilization in transporting bodies 1. In the city , 2. on the highways (suburban problem). You'll notice I didn't mention engine type. Why? If you can't answer such fundamental questions in of all places, Scientific American you definitely should exclude yourself from the discussion. That goes for all. We must apply engineering principals to this problem, due to the costs of energy short-falling, and then apply market tools given our solution set (which we do not yet have). First engineering, then marketing. We haven't done the engineering, I've started at least, speaking personally, and the future of our species is personal to me. So if you can't or won't do the engineering... Stay out and watch please.
You said, ...As is seen here it's very possible .... I hope you were talking of good transit design and by SEEN HERE I hope you mean in one of the SA articles. If so which one. I so much (excepting my big Electrical Engineering ego, if you know an EE you'll know what I mean) want to find others who do engineering-like transit design.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, just like the Free Market had children working in coal mines and rivers catching on fire every few years. Maybe we can take the infallible jugement of those same bold entreprenuers that calculated paying out wrongful death settlements for exploding Ford Pintos was cheaper than recalling them and use it to solve our current problems...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Europe is so bad, why do they have higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality all while spending a fraction of what the U.S. does on healthcare? The problem with you Free Market Fundamentalists is that you totally ignore the fact the GREED has been the cause of the VAST majority of suffering that humans have inflicted on one another throughout history. And you want me to believe that only now, after some inexplicable change in basic human behavior, things are totally different and greed is a GOOD thing? No wonder people like you are so quick to deny basic reality...
Those ghettoes were created when white people left (see: White Flight) because they didn't want to live around people that didn't have the same skin tone as them. They mostly landed in the suburbs as that housing was the cheapest (subsidized by the government). This shrinked the tax base for the inner cities but it did not get rid of the discrimination and its knock-on effects that the people left in the inner cities suffered. The inner cities deteriorated and the people left there had hardly any services available to put them on a level economic playing field with the people from the suburbs. Then the fictional "Welfare Queen" canard started going around in rightwing circles, eventually making it into the popular culture. This was used as the impetus to cut services further. The drug prohibition and discriminatory enforcement culture (see differences if sentencing of cocaine vs crack possession offenders) made things even worse. So yeah, why would you try to expect anything of yourself if society doesn't either. Why would you see any opportunity in your future if you grew up in an inner city warzone?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe original suburbs were built along trolley lines in the late 19th century. If the neighbors are unhappy with the aesthetics of light rail how about paying more and depressing the train into a cut like they did with the Orange Line in Boston?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Line_%28MBTA%29
What a waste of time and money. There is a reason people don't use public transportation. It is called try dragging 4 kids to school, shop for 100 lbs of groceries and drag it all home on a train? It just will not happen. No actually, you can't build a bunch of little walking distance shops because these inevitable will not have everything and prices go up when quantity can't be used to reduce prices. Public transport is only good for the lone commuter with less than 30 lbs to carry, basically someone going to work where equipment is not carried and students.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrains or buses can only work if you plan to force everyone to give up entertainment, variety in life, free choice in what you buy and do, restrict movement. Who is going to want to doll up to go to a Musical or something if you have to take the Tux and Dress on a damn train for a couple of hours, then have to hike half a mile or more. Plus with no cars, you can't go on vacation, again, ever try getting 3 kids all too small to carry their own stuff to an airport on public transport, it is near impossible and potentially dangerous for the kids.
How about a simple plan, instead of complex nonsense here. What is simple. Pass a law forcing everyone onto natural gas powered engines would be a start. Far less pollution from a still usable care and no need to impose government controlled utopias on people.
Also, what exactly do you plan to do if all 300 million people in America tried to use a train or bus. You would end up with the same grid lock and environmental damage. Why, because you would have to lay track over every available piece of land to accommodate the trains or there would be so many buses you would end up likely with more pollution because the buses would run 24/7, where cars are typically used less than an hour a day.
This plan is a lost cause. You try to make a suburb like this, people will just move to where they can be free to do as they want.
How about trying to drag a family of 5 onto your train and see how that works out? Try doing a grocery shop or back to school shop for those same kids and I hope you can carry about 100 lbs of stuff with you on a stupid train.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen go to Tokyo on typical day and see if you can read while pressed against a few hundred other people.
You realize it takes a certain amount of energy to move a person for point A to B, no matter what the form of transport? That so called cost to society(nice socialist term there) is the same no matter what you do. So you remove all cars and what, you end up with a hundred million buses on the road, also grid locked and spewing pollution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you come up with an actual alternative form of energy that can actually be used then do something simple, like force all cars onto that new form of energy.
Right now the only viable choice is natural gas engines, which would work, is simpler to do and doesn't require vast socialist bureaucracies and regulations to make it happen.
That would be a hell no. I think the Europeans have proven over the last 2000 years, is they don't actually do much right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Free Market and Greed are the cause of suffering?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLast time I checked neither of those were thinking entities controlling anyone.
Most people suffering is caused by politicians and theocrats who decide they should invade others instead of create their own prosperity, kill in the name of religion or enslave people because they are different. None of that has to do with a free market, which by definition requires everyone to actually be free.
It is jackass leaders and the fools who follow them causing suffering. Greed is the same. The free market does not cause greed or do you actually believe the various communists and other dictators who have and do exists are motivated by something other than greed as well?
And the last time I checked the Free Market countries like America are the only ones trying to keep pollution down. I have traveled to over 20 countries and 300 cities world wide, China, Russia, Africa, parts of europe, these places have so much pollution everywhere you can't breathe the air, literally, your lungs wont let you and the rivers and lakes are so bad, even being near them will likely kill you. So if the choice is between free markets, where there is at least some pollution control happening or living near an old soviet or new chinese industrial city, I think I will take the free market and try to live longer.
Do you actually have a copy of the communist manifesto as well? I mean you are practically repeating left wing insanity word for word here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are also plenty of examples of failure where centralized government control of everything and everyone in a country. Soviet Union, Cuba, Maoist China, Apartheid South Africa.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Yes-the free market did resolve the problems you describe."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo it did not, pokey! It took labor strikes and federal government intervention to get even minimal safety and work standards instituted. Look up Blair Mountain Uprising to see how opposed the "FREE MARKET" was to even minimal reforms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
Or read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair or "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. When you are leagally required to maximize shareholder return as a corporation, you will spend the least amount of money on safety and environmental protection you can get away with. If your cost/benefit analysis doesn't agree with the poor workers that have to suffer working for you, or the innocent bystanders that have to take in your pollution into their bodies, then you will continue that destructive behavior unless outside forces make you align your interests with the rest of society.
"Religion has certainly caused more conflict, and racism or prejudice have also caused more problems."
Those conflicts were in the name of religion or racism to motivate the average, illeterate footsoldiers of the time. Look at the 30-Years War, the 100-Years War, the War of the Roses, the Crusades, etc. The people (kings, tyrants, etc.) actually running the war were doing it solely for land, power, treasure, slaves, etc. The settling of North America saw it's native population reduced to less than 10% of its original value, all so that Europeans could take their land. The Spanish conquistadors were 99% motivated by pillaging gold and taking native slaves.
Get your facts straight, man...
Most new urbanists don't think we are realistically going to do away with the car, the idea is to minimize it--minimize driving and to minimize the undeniably ugly effect car centric design has had on our built environment. Few people would agree that a streetscape dominated by huge blank beige garage doors and acres of concrete is attractive when compared to a home fronting the sidewalk with a lovely porch filled with flower baskets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI moved from a sprawling suburban subdivision to a suburban new urbanist neighborhood. Do I still drive? Of course I do--but I drive a hell of a lot less, about half the amount as in my old neighborhood. Not to mention my new neighborhood is designed for people, not cars--with wide sidewalks and mixed uses, so my neighbors are always out walking and as a result, everyone here knows everyone.
I find it very amusing people say these developments restrict freedom--yeah, I guess they do resrtrict my freedom to spend half my life sitting in my car. Not to mention 98% of suburban development is still large lot sprawl, not compact, walkable development--so for those who want to spend quality time with their car instead of their families, you have plenty of ways to do so.
"You realize it takes a certain amount of energy to move a person for point A to B, no matter what the form of transport?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
A Prius can do it with half the energy a Hummer can and a Leaf can move the same number of people with half the energy a Prius needs. Argument Destroyed! BLAMO!
"So you remove all cars and what, you end up with a hundred million buses on the road, also grid locked and spewing pollution."
You must not like Crows because you build an awful lot of Strawmen (Arguments).
But priddseren, we are Europeans. Mostly British by culture(and so the British in turn have become fatter THAN EVEN we!). Europe had a different and longer history, and they both benefit (less distance between average destination, origination pairs) and suffer, embedded class delineation, which tends to keep the status quo fixed in general. My city, Austin, is old by Texas standards, and most is post WWII. Much of Paris is still Medieval, not withstanding the Napoleon III/ Haussmann alliance, They are in spite of their bulkiness of disparate factions and cultures less sensitive to energy cost increases than us. This will not be a small matter in the next few years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo priddseren, you've actually done the math for the number of buses required to replace cars!? Lets do it now. Say in Austin, there are 1M people in the greater Metro area. That would mean about 300,000 cars (US has 300M people, has 100M cars at a replacemnt rate of 10M a year (that includes pickup trucks)). Each bus holds about 45 people but all riders aren't carried at the same time. The rush hours carry about 80% lets say of the people that travel and on any day lets say that 90% of the people travel. The rush hour is say two and a half hours long and bell curved. You run the buses every 9-minutes on average, because you hired me , and I can do this withh non-redundant route allignment topology, because I have done the analysis and simulation for such. Lets say at peak the buses are 40% higher than average during the rushes. I have bus operations experience that tells me this is proper. So average riders per run iteration is (.8x.9/2.5x9/60)x1M = 43.2K per bus iteration so given each bus caries 45 people we see we needabout 1K buses. We Now use 400 buses and have a very wasteful, redundant system. However we forgot the 40% peak increase (its a bell curve), so we really need 1.4K buses. But of course we must decrease the redundamncy to make it really work. Funny thing is it works better with more routes, because the buses would run parallel to each other seperated by 1/8th a mile (three blocks, my current Austin system replacement runs 1/2 mile apart on average w/ 420 buses).
1.4k buses (as is) versus 300K cars. 1.4X500 = 700 in millions of dollars versus 300x15 =4500, buses beat cars in capital equipment cost by 6.4x. then there's operating costs as well. would you care to do the analysis on that one priddseren?
Sorry guy. It takes X amount of joules to move a mass. It is always the same. The fact that some vehicles waste energy to do it, does not change the fact. Public transport does not magically make movement of mass energy free.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain with the straw man comments. I am only taking what is here. What the heck do you think will happen if you succeed in banning all cars and force everyone on to public transportation? You need to build enough buses and trains to accommodate the 300 million people who will need to move around. So where do the buses and trains go? On the same roads and even more rail lines, which uses up more land, takes up more resources and you end up at best using the same energy and producing the same pollution. The main reason, because there is no time in history where government has done anything efficiently.
Save your condescending strawman comments as a way to try to ignore practical facts. There is simply no efficiency or free energy and just as much pollution in trying to get 300 million people to use a bus
So priddseren, you said we need "hundreds of millions of buses", My analysis shows that in Austin, we would need 1.4K buses to replace 300K cars. That is a ration of 0.467 percent. Lets say we want more room on the buses even at peak, so lets make it 1% ratio instead. Than we could replace our 300M autos with 3 Million buses. Please desist from writing without due diligence and certainly the ability to do the analysis in the first place if that is your issue and not just laziness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you speak of natural Gas as a energy source, please iterate how much natural gas we have, world wide, categorized by what means we can extract it (ie. conventionally versus risk based techniques) and then show the life expectancy for those reserves, world-wide, based on conversion of oil use to gas use. That is at our current oil depletion rate how long would gas last if it replaces oil. That is the proper question isn’t it? Could you please do this simple analysis for us priddseren since you said we should convert to natural gas and that would solve our problems.
Lol, yeah only with no cars, people use the buses even more than normal, plus the lack of density, such as LA, means you can't use a dense city as a measure to extrapolate the number of buses needed. And it still does not change the fact that 300 million people need to move around and that means more buses, more bus stations and what happens when these people get where they are going, grandma in her little electric cart will use the bus how?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat happens at night, people working on the night shift or wanting to go to a bar? You going to run those buses all night? wasting fuel? Nope, you will cut it back and force people to travel further to get to the bus station only they can't because you took their cars. You want to solve the problem of carbon output from cars, then do it buy changing the cars. Your method will never ever work. Besides the obvious practical problems all that will happen is the few who have money, will still have cars and everyone else will be forced into using your public transport, reducing life to the few things you can do within a mile of the house, like it was before cars were invented. But I would expect this from socialists, the entire idea is equal misery, this nonsense will certainly do it.
300 million people and you think you can predict every possible transport need they will have, buff up 100 lbs mothers to carry 100 lbs of groceries for her kids, make sure kids are not lost or taken and somehow get all of this to every corner of every suburb? Yeah that is easier than just changing the cars to pollute less.
You go to Europe and try to convince them you are NOT american. I have been all over, everyone knows who americans are, they don't consider us them and your statement disregards the 30% of the population not Anglo and you have no idea what I am.
Regarding "It takes X amount of joules to move a mass. It is always the same." No its not. If we travel less distance we use less energy if there are losses per distance such as wind and rolling resistance and increased stops and starts. If we travel slower we use less energy; going half as fast use ONE FOURTH the energy. (1/2)Mass(Velocity)**2 If we reduce the mass we use less energy. If we stop and restart often we use less energy. WE can change the shape of the vehicle to decrease wind resistance, especially at higher speeds which means at longer distances because if you have longer distances you must travel faster due to time restrictions of humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPer the bus thing, I haven't done the analysis so I can't speak of the energy savings or losses by converting to buses. See priddseren, that's how its done. I can't speak to what I haven't really, REALLY, understood. I have to get up at 2 am, so I'm going to sleep. Its a simple analysis priddseren, why don't you do it or are you a Shakespeare that thought he was in a literature thread? I value Shakespeare, but not in this thread. I do hope I'm wrong and you redeem yourself priddseren.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFunny thing is most US cities are not more dense that LA. Austin isn't. 80% of its current area is post 1990 development. You couldn't truthfully say that in 1980 or even 1990. But I would guess that Atlanta is now a lot less dense than LA. Property values in LA (and San Fransico and San Diego)have kept lots small as well. I offer naming Atlanta the Car Capital of the World as opposed to LA.
Regarding our not being European or as I included mostly British by culture, I stand by that (and I live in texas , which has always been Very latino). Even Mexico is arguablly mostly European in culture. Night, night.
Exactly, we dont know what buses really would do but we do know what humans do. There is no practical way to remove cars and replace them with public transport.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as energy, perhaps a little Einstein and Newton reading are needed by you. It takes X energy to move a mass. Yeah sure less energy from point A to B than A to C because well it is less distance, not less energy.
The point here is your fantasy that you can make it possible to move a mass with zero energy is a problem. It will always take energy to move a mass, I am not sure how you don't understand the simplest of newton's laws. If you want to move a man from his house 10 miles away, it takes energy. The fact that something could make it take more energy is not relevant, there is a minimum amount. Sure a goal to get cars to that minimum amount is probably a good idea. You wont get there by removing cars and building millions of buses to replace them.
Or trains, sure trains get something like 500 miles to the gallon per ton of Mass but that only works if the train is long and has millions of lbs of weight and only works on an individual track. As soon as you make it 3 cars with variable amounts of people, you no longer get that 500 miles per gallon.
And as I said before, unless you plan to force the majority of the population to live in enclaves, they are only allowed to leave when government approved, you would have to run trains and buses all the time, which means a lot of wasted empty trains and buses, which means pollution.
Even if buses and trains were magically able to move people with Zero fuel costs, no pollution and no environmental impact from laying rail everywhere, Even if it was the best idea. There is still no practical way to make it work for every human and get hundreds of millions of humans to live so identically that they could make use of it.
As I said before, you want to cut fuel use in cars, then make better cars. It would be easier to force everyone to buy a Prius or Leaf and ban use of all other vehicles, including antiques, sports cars and even motor cycles. It would even be easier to change from Gasoline to Natural Gas.
Getting humans to all ride trains, behave the same and live life within one mile of home, impossible. It just will not happen.
As a point of information one might find it useful to go to the www.bestplaces.net site, search by zip code and click on housing. It will among other things break down housing stock by decade built. That is a quick and dirty indication of how practical public transportation is going to be in that area - generally the newer the housing as a %, the less practical. In case anyone noticed, we're in a depression right now. Not much new housing is likely to be built for a while. We're kind of stuck with what we've got. The reality here is that there is not going to be much shifting in our housing patterns for quite some time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI used to fly as a pilot extensively all over the US and Europe. It was always amazing to see the difference in European cities and Americans one from the air. American ones gradually peter out into suburbs and exurbs. European ones just end abruptly and farmland starts with no intermediate phase. It's no wonder public transportation is more practical there.
why? I like my car. I don't want to do without it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOpposite situation is happening in downtown Chicago. Driving there is not practical--too much money for parking and such a hassle. So most people take the train to work and to visit there. Also I know people who live there getting rid of their cars since it's so expensive to get spaces for them to the tune of $200 a month.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe're talking here about a city with very walker friendly features and being able to get to most amenities via public transport. The suburbs and exurbs are connected via a pretty efficient train hub.
I use the car mostly to get from my house to the train station and back. But in the suburb/town I live in I can walk because it's pedestrian friendly. This was a necessity since not everyone in my family can drive. Mainly use a car for vacations and to go to the grocery store. People who live in these walkable cities are fitter and in better health for abvious reasons. On the other hand, I've seen locals who drive two frickin blocks because of their car centric conditioning!! These people are fat and lazy.
Some people here should look carefully at what they write. Let's see:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- improving public transport doesn't mean "taking away people's cars"; they can still keep and use them as and when they see fit.
- any situation where you have two options instead of one increases your freedom, not the opposite.
I'm a bike commuter, which means I'm saving money by the bucketload and I've never been fitter in my life, but I have 2 cars and a motorcycle in the garage. They're there because I exercise my freedom to own them, and because it's occasionaly necessary or just pleasant to use them.
Where's the loss in freedom? I love cars, but I don't marry them.
I wonder if this development would really attract people who intend to or have to rely on transit to get around, because its description as "just outside Washington, DC" is a bit misleading. This part of Rockville is 20 or so road miles from downtown DC if you're driving, and if you're not the nearest Metro stop to King Farm Rd. (Shady Grove) is the end of the line, so I question whether people who want to or need to use transit would be moving up here anyway. Even those not going as far as downtown DC would be much better served in a place like Bethesda or even the "Town Center" area of Rockville, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that people who are moving in here drive and appear to want to keep doing that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCentaurus: " People who live in these walkable cities are fitter and in better health for abvious reasons."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually no. Health standards go along with economic standards. Healthy people are much more likely to own and use a private vehicle than less healthy people. People in suburbs tend to be educated, white, lower and upper middle class. They are in better health than those in cities who tend to be less educated and ethnic. Yes, there elite urban dwellers but they are a minority. Most inner city dwellers are uneducated, many obese and many with substance abuse issues.
geojellyroll,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a racist comment. Have you ever been to Downtown Chicago? It is more expensive to live there than in the suburbs. It is pretty ethnically diverse as well but there are many young people living there (and yes, for your racist views many white people too). More people want to live there but can't afford it.
The town I live in is 90% white, so your misplaced comments are not just wrong they show you for who you really are--an unhealthy person with a limited perspective, the worst of the suburbanite types. I know your type. They live here too. They're lazy and obese.
I'm also not saying abandon the car. I'm saying a walker friendly city is much more healthy. I know I work in one and live in another. When the car dependence gets unhealthy is when people become so dependent that they drive two blocks, and yes, these people tend to be obese and lazy. I've seen this everywhere I travel. The rural country (where they're mostly white) where they have to depend on the car has the worst obesity rates. So get your facts straight.
Centaurus. Science has nothing to do with your zealous political correctness. The healthiest Americans are white middle class suburbanites. The least healthy are inner city blacks and Latinos. You might find this comment racist but the same fact is pointed out over and over by black community advocates demanding more funding for inner city families in major cities in the USA. Non whites have higher levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease. etc. They have lower incomes and they have LOWER levels of personal vehicle ownership.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIgnoring reality doesn't make it go away.
This is more than a technological/planning issue. It doesn't matter how wonderful the alternative transit might be. People will continue to suffer all the costs and inconveniences of driving as long as walking, biking and taking public transportation present a credible risk of being harassed, mugged, raped, or murdered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many times do I have to ask you for proof to back up your statements? The highest rates of obesiety and diabetes are in the Former Confederate States. Ever heard of the "Diabetes Belt" or do you know where the fattest cities in the USA are? Do you know the state with the healthiest BMI? It's not Vermont, New Hampshire or any of the other "whitest" states. It's Colorado, a state with a major Hispanic population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are indeed a racist luddite that probably has 2 friends and their names are Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
The lower deck of the George Washington Bridge in New York City was also designed for rail road tracks. They have yet to be installed. Even New Yorkers wanted automobiles more that train tracks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault. Blacks and Hispanics are less healthy on average than whites. They are less healthy than whites in your diabetes belt and less healthy than whites in northern cities like New York and Chicago. In the healthy state of Colorado, Blacks and Hispanics are less healthy than whites.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhite people have higher income than minorities in all regions of the USA and with this higher income goes better health care, better education and the cycle continues.
You can call reality 'racism' all you want but the socio-economic group with the highest percent of vehicle ownership is also the healthiest. Living in a city and being without a vehicle usually means one is a ethnic minority, an elder senior or a student rather than a healthy yuppie who rides a bicycle to work and drinks fancy coffee.
Cities are made up of all types of 'people' and not just your yuppies.
This story suggests that residents of King Farm are anti-transit NIMBYs, thus implying even residents of new urbanist neighborhoods fear public transit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat makes the story essentially wrong? Because it omits one fairly important fact: King Farm is ALREADY within walking distance of the Shady Grove subway stop. The center of King Farm is an 0.6 mile (about a 15 minute walk) from Shady Grove. So if King Farm residents had some aversion to public transit, they probably would be living somewhere else.
Geojellyroll-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSaying that "Most inner city dwellers are uneducated, many obese and many with substance abuse" is a massively inaccurate generalization. If you have paid attention to most of the residents of the Boston to DC megalopolis, most of them are educated without substance abuse issues. I know many, many African-American yuppies who live in cites and happen to be as healthy and wealthy as any Caucasians who live in suburbs.I am unconvinced that any of your statements are supported by anything but your personal opinion.
I say do away with internal combustion engine cars and replace them with compressed air cars. They are much more powerful than the puny hybrids and electric vehicles we have today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA car powered by 500 liters of compressed air will have a maximum power of 300,000 hp. Almost 3x more powerful than the jet engine Thrust supersonic car. With that much power, it can go supersonic. Best of all, it’s clean no emission at all.
Dr Strangelove.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo for it. Make them and market them. Nothing is stopping you but your intelligence.
jellyroll.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe MDI Air Car has been in production since 1994 in France. This compressed air car is not designed for high performance. It can be redesigned for high performance by simply increasing the air pressure and the outlet valve size.
A modified car powered by 100 liters of compressed air will have a maximum power of 300,000 hp, a range of 2,000 miles, and top speed of over 760 mph. Sounds like science fiction? It can easily be proven by basic physics.
The question should read as follows:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan cars be designed to meet the needs of suburban traffic?
The answer is already state-of-the-art: small, leightweight and limited-speed EVs for suburban and city traffic, as well as for driving out to the suburban perimeter where the big, heavy and fast intercity car is waiting on its permanently assigned peripheral public parking lot.
The problem is that the average American taxpayer can no longer afford the construction and maintenance cost of high-road networks, nor the purchase and maintenance costs of a big and heavy car as it is mandatory for fast and safe intercity travel!
The solution that does away with both the high-road networks and the big cars is called "individual aeromobility", based on ULE-VERTOL-RW (Ultra-Light, Electric, Vertical Take-Off and Landing, Rotary-Wing) aircraft.
The tilt-rotor aircraft is potentially eligible in this view, i.e. as a PA (Personal Aircraft). Potentially only, because the only civil project in this line, the Bell-Agusta BA-609, has ground to a standstill. (Symptomatically, after transferring the prototype to Italy, Bell has recently sold the project to its Italian partner Agusta Finmecchanica).
The snag with the BA-609 is that it cannot autorotate. Yet don't count on Bell to help Agusta work out a solution(which is quite feasible), nor even less to develop an ultra-light version of the concept (because the US militaries are haunted by the vision of myriads of ULMs challenging their absolute control of the global airspace).
Sikorsky's X2 could do -- at least in the first run with the upper middle-class as a trendsetter for airborne individual intercity traffic.
But in the longer run the revolutionary rotary-wing concept I invented back in 1982 will outfly both the X2 and the tilt-rotor.
Sorry for not being able to further detail the concept, since it is still not protected.
Interesting. But tilt rotors and rotary wings are powered by piston engines or gas turbine engines. They still use hydrocarbon fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHovercraft is better because it needs less power than equal sized helicopter, tilt rotor or rotary wing. You can use compressed air engine instead of internal combustion engines. So no CO2 emission. And you don't need roads with hovercraft. It can travel even on water. Hovercrafts can be built small, the size of a mid-sized sedan.
Dear Doc Strangeluv...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince you don't seem to know that EADS, the european world leader in rotary-wing aircaft, has publicly demonstrated its full-size electrically powered helicopter in Paris last month, I think you'd better comment on strange aspects of love than on rotary-wing aircraft... moreover, noticing that your post is an early-mornig job, I'm tempted to believe you're Swiss -- and if so I'd like to remind you of the famous saying "the Swiss get up early but wake up late!"
More seriously: your suggestion of the hovercraft must be a hoax -- these vessels are just good on water surfaces, and maybe on dead-flat terrain (after the crops have been harvested) with a long strech of land free of any obstacle taller than one foot straight ahead, because steering and braking (against the whole inertia of the craft) is only possible by means of the thrust propeller(s).
The superior 2D-mobility of England's maritime fleet had once founded the Commonwealth... but this was ages ago.
Today the global power enforcement joker of the US government is based on superior 3D-mobility in the earth's airspace. This formerly called air superiority has been recently renamed "global reach" since it is no more based mainly on supersonic fighters, but increasingly on unmanned bombers, some of which are (or will soon be) of the one-way hypersonic ram-jet type designed to reach any point on the globe in less than 2 hours in order to drop six tons of bombs each...
This is a guess, yet reality may surpass fiction since the Pentagone has recently reported a record flight from New York to Los Angeles in 12 minutes!
Now, the Pentagone is certainly witholding the strategic truth, which lies rather in the (already existing or planned) number of these bombers -- just keep in mind that they are ultra-lightweight and utterly simple (no moving parts except the high-pressure fuel pump) and thus very cheap to produce.
(end of 1st part)
(2nd part)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet there is hope! Don't think they are the ultimate evolution in aviation -- these military vectors are as criminal as the atomic bomb, and their civil counter-parts, the A-380s and B-747s, are just (in)human cattle-carriers resembling dinosaurs and maybe heading towards the same fate.
Birds fly since 200 million years, whereas mankind got airborne just little more than a century ago, wich is near to nothing on evolution's time scale -- what a shame!
The first birds were evolving from reptiles thanks to their heavily resin-clad envelope -- small wonder the best performers among man-made aircraft consist of 100% resin. And you should consider that within the tiny time space of human aviation these latter came on only very recently, which leaves plenty of room for an unprecedented boom of human-sized electrical rotary-wing aircraft...
Even more so, the electronic navigation and collision-avoidance technology is redundantly ready for a newly structured airspace with millions of virtual, instantly modifiable, individual highways projected ahead of each autopilot with a near absolute warranty that no route ever conflicts with any other, and with the autopilot following the electronic track as precisely and reliably as an automatic suburb train follows its hardened-steel rails (e.g. the fully automatic M2-Metro in Lausanne, Switzerland).
If you take due time to reflect upon these prospects, you may come to understand that the automatically flying personal aircraft of the future will be able to serve as well as an individual public transport module offering even your unaccompanied kids a safety level by several magnitudes higher than mom's SUV!
Yes, you got that right: there will be essentially no more pilots, only autopilots and occupants travelling through the skies of the future...
EADS helicopter is a hybrid powered by diesel engine. I don't think aircrafts will replace the car. That was the futuristic vision in the 1930s. Now an outdated vision.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHovercrafts cannot fly like a helicopter but they don't need concrete roads, just flat land. Btw, the Swiss invented that handy pocketknife, made fine watches, and has the largest scientific machine.
a carfree city, carfree suburbs would be heaven on earth
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