Podcast: Measuring Carbon Emissions at Street Level

This week we're joined by Dr. Kevin Gurney of Arizona State University to talk about measuring carbon emissions at a more human scale including at the street level.


Find out more at Streetsblog.

Running Scared

The green movement is gaining influence and looking for 10% of the revenue for carbon credits. But this is scary to the highway movement as their influence and scare tactics wear thin.

According to Greg Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, the changing partisan guard in Washington has made highway groups wary of the focus on transit funds. “People are much more nervous about being on the chopping block,” he said. “It seems like the anti-highway crowd has much more influence than they had in the past.”

Anti highway? How about pro livable communities.

Disappointing CAP

I'm a bit disappointed that the Center for American Progress would be pushing natural gas BRT as a strategy instead of electrification with clean energy. They also have the fun generalizations about BRT such as "And construction of BRT systems cost 30 times less than a subway system" and "which operates like a subway system". I believe we've discussed this before in that once you get to the point where you're building real BRT the costs are much much higher than these 30 times claims.

If we're going to assume that BRT is a solution for heavy traveled corridors that aren't dense enough in riders for light rail, there is a case to be made for electrification and trolley buses in terms of public health (particulates) and energy (one power plant vs many). While CNG is much better than diesel, zero particulates should be the goal. We continue to see fossil fuel based solutions when we should be looking even further down the road.

A Public Health Issue

There is a lesson here for pregnant mothers. Stay away from freeways.

A team from the University of California, Irvine, has shown that pregnant women living within 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) of a major roadway in Los Angeles are 128% more at risk of giving birth prematurely.

Giving people options is a public health issue. Don't let people tell you otherwise.

Not About Just Buildings, Cars

CNT has released another Affordability Index update that shows transportation emissions is 70% less in cities than in the suburbs. Why is this? Because people don't have to drive as much. You can see already the benefits and it isn't all about electric cars. Yet some in Southern California think that SB375, the landmark climate change bill can be addressed with electric cars alone. Sorry guys. It doesn't work like that.

Schuiling challenged the idea that land use changes are required to meet the state’s GHG reduction goals because the goal cannot be met by making cleaner vehicles, as the California Air Resources Board has suggested. “That is simply not true,” Schuiling said.

But its not just transportation, it's building as well, but we need to look at this as a complete system. This singular focus on one method is somewhat maddening. I know there are a lot of people who are hoping for a magic green car or a magic green building but we're also forgetting our water usage and population growth among other things. We can't keep building lanes on our roads and we certainly can't keep growing out over all the farmland in the Central Valley or Napa. The best thing we can do is look for solutions to all these things and I feel that is compact development and transit options.

Destroying What You're Trying to Protect

The divide in understanding transportation's value to working families is rather disheartening. At one time, automobiles were seen as the great equalizer, allowing upward mobility for the masses. Sometime along the way, they went from being a benefit to being a burden. Costs of ownership increased as land use patterns led Americans to drive even further away from their workplaces in search of an inexpensive place to raise a family that had a yard for the dog. But that house was in a place where the family had to buy two or even three cars to keep mobile.

But that push through subsidy towards the suburban ideal, has left us with lopsided policy that spends more money than we need to on urban development and mobility. It also leads people to believe that transit is a tool of the poor alone, not seeing the possible benefits to them personally. A recent New York Review of Books (via T4A) article notes that the poor are a large part of the transit constituency and that the regressive effects of a carbon tax should be offset by building more buses.

Investment in the infrastructure of a post-auto-industrial society would provide some compensation for the regressive effects of a carbon tax (or of the increase in prices that would result from a "cap and trade" scheme, as industries passed on the costs of compliance to consumers). It would be an investment in the technologies that are used by poor people, including buses, bus stops, and information about the departures of buses and transit vans.

But what about the middle class? They are squeezed as well with rising costs of automobiling and rising home costs in cities. An answer that has become more palatable is increasing transit funding and moving towards better land use patterns and policies that would increase housing in the core. This change would allow people to save money, and allow them to live within their means by saving money on transportation costs.

But others don't see it that way. Some conservatives and especially libertarians would have you think that freedom is the automobile and that everyone wants to live in a big house with three cars. They believe so much so in this that anything else is forced upon those who we know are actually self selecting. Here is Milwaukee uber conservative Patrick McIlheran:

What's more, people can and do live transit-oriented lives along these Milwaukee streets and others. While Bernstein argued that people here are made poorer by having to drive a lot, the fact is that there's a lot of reasonable real estate next to scheduled transit, should you want it.

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Dense, transit-oriented living is good and useful for those who seek it. Where its enthusiasts err is in feeling that many more people, maybe all, should be seeking it and that spending lots of tax money will make that happen.

Yeah, TOD isn't going to be everyone's choice, rational thinkers know that, but the problem here is that we're spending lots of tax money to make automobiling happen and not investing in the other pieces of the transportation spectrum or sustainable development. But the mistake he makes here is the idea that buses are for the poor or people who want that lifestyle, but they don't deserve better service that might increase the demand.

Sure people could choose to live a transit oriented lifestyle on the existing bus system, but last time I heard, Milwaukee conservatives have been starving it to death, creating a situation where its not really an option. They don't just have a thing against trains, they have a thing against quality transit. And that is too bad because they are punishing those who they think they are trying to help. Since when did the idea of pooling money for an outcome that is a common good become a bad idea? The savings would be incredible and its unfortunate that the disconnect is even there.

The thing that Patrick is railing against is actually what he's advocating on the other end. It's hypocrisy at its greatest, pushing away from what the market is actually working towards and artificially going the other way. One would hope that if he really wanted to save taxpayer money, he would advocate for the most efficient land use patterns and push for less tax revenue going to large road projects and into projects that could save a lot of people money. In essence, he's pushing for people to spend thousands more so they can save hundreds. This never made sense to me.

Walk & Train

Ryan says:

It's easier to support a carbon tax if you have a grocery store within walking distance and can take the train to work.

Absolutely. I would likely be skeptical if I were living in Austin still and knew that I had to drive to get most places. Now that BART and the Grocery store are a half mile in each direction, I don't worry about it anymore. I fill up my car maybe once every month and a half, sometimes even longer. Think about if everyone was able to move from once a week to once every two months. More money for local business, more money for alternative energy and more money for housing near transit. Winners all around.

Singles Use Energy

Anyone seen this? Says singles use more energy. I wonder if they controlled for city living vs. suburban living.

Monday Linkage

I haven't had a lot of time to write, but wanted to share with you all what has come through the ole reader.
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Arnold wants to waive CEQA to pass the budget. I like that for transit, not so much for roads.
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Tom Friedman writes gas tax and Oberstar talks about it on NPR.
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A Portland Architect talks about how GM should be the catalyst for a nationwide streetcar revival.
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Four subway lines opened this year. Just not in this country.

Good for Chu

Caught this over at Planetizen:

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told the Wall Street Journal in September.

From the Wall Street Journal Article:

In a sign of one major internal difference, Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work.

At least someone in the administration gets it. Apparently Obama does not, at least publicly.

But Mr. Obama has dismissed the idea of boosting the federal gasoline tax, a move energy experts say could be the single most effective step to promote alternative energies and temper demand. Mr. Obama said Sunday that a heightened gas tax would be a "mistake" because it would put "additional burdens on American families right now."

Signs of the Apocolypse

Well kinda. Click and Clack are pretty smart guys, but having the Car Talk guys advocate a 50 cent gas tax has to count for something right?

"I'm sick of people whining about a lousy 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline! I think its time has come, and I call on all non-wussy politicians to stand with me, because our country needs us."

Amen.

Friday Night Linkfest: Stimulus & Transit

Folks in Atlanta are looking at a massive transit program to build out their system called Concept 3, but how are they going to get $40 billion dollars?
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Congressman Oberstar has our back. He wants to spend more on transit, and if the highway junkies don't like it, tough.
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Ahem. Advocates are not split Boston Globe. We want transit, walking, and biking projects. There is no dichotomy of we have to build roads because they will create jobs and the other projects won't. That is complete and utter bs.
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Tunnel lovers just won't give up (I wish there was a tunnel). Shouldn't this project have been built years ago? Get it started already!
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The Cinci NAACP is opposing a streetcar project complaining about potholes in neighborhoods. Seems to me like they should be opposing all those suburban road projects. This is exactly how the Madison streetcar died, except that time, it was police coverage. The trade off shouldn't be transit or streets or police.

Transit Energy Efficiency & Lifecycle Costs

We've seen any number of calculations of energy efficiency and green house gases in transit modes. Some a bit out there because of crazy assumptions for autos. Even our favorite libertarian O'Toole played the game. The problem with all of these is that they don't consider the whole picture, or what happens when buildings are built closer together and transportation makes it easier for people to walk. But I digress.

At Rail~Volution I saw a presentation by Tina Hodges at the FTA that had some cool charts and comparisons of modes. The one I've seen before is the increase in VMT versus what CAFE standards will do. Now we've seen that there is a bit of a drop recently due to the economy but with gas prices as they are and no change in habits, I still believe this will happen.


Then here is the difference between current occupancies vs. all of the vehicles full and over the lifecycle of the vehicle in the second chart. These are based on a UC Berkeley study by Mikhail Chester that considered vehicle construction, guidway construction etc. The list of items lifecycled are at the link. Apparently buses off peak are the worst and peak are the best, even better than rail lines. Yet rail lasts longer and attracts more passengers overall so on average is better. I didn't really have time to read the 332 page tome, but if you're interested go for it.


But the most interesting in the presentation to me was the difference between the Heavy Rail modes. BART is the most efficient while Cleveland is almost as bad as a single occupancy vehicle. The relative inefficiency of the EL was surprising to me as well.

Thought this would be of interest to folks. I have to say again that its necessary to not just measure the lifecycle and modes but rather the land uses and transportation, but its interesting to learn that this work is being done.

Shaking in Policy Boots

The opposition is getting worried and you can tell when their rhetoric starts to sound like this:

At the same time, many environmental groups, labor unions, consultants, and construction companies are urging the federal government to redirect federal transportation policy toward 19th century transportation options by shifting federal resources from highways and autos to transit and trains, as well as hiking and biking, in the belief that these latter modes--while slower and more costly--are more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. With an opportunity to receive greater subsidies, the transit and train lobbies have moved aggressively to influence Congress and the media, and many in Congress are already promising to push for these changes.

In other words, watch out for BIG RAIL and SUPERTRAINS! Turns out, Obama doesn't listen to these dudes. We're looking at transit stimulus rather than Iran War Games at Heritage. The rest of the Heritage article is the usual shpiel about ridership share and all the other BS you come to expect from the sprawlistas.

This brings up another issue that Yglesias talked about today as well. With the auto industry, these guys (Cox and Utt) have been pushing hard in parrallel with the auto industry for standards that deny many people a lifestyle they would like to have and independence from an expensive habit.

The auto industry has provided a decent living to a large number of Americans for many decades. But it’s also been a very pernicious force on our public policy. If car companies expect progressives to deliver them a financial rescue, then it only seems fair to me that progressives will want the companies to stop blocking key elements of the progressive political agenda. That means dropping lawsuits like the one aimed at forcing California to lower its fuel efficiency standards, it means stopping involvement in whatever anti-green climate change front groups these firms are involved with, it means seeing members of congress from Michigan and other rust belt areas offering assurances to colleagues that they won’t stand in the way of serious climate legislation, etc.
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These firms will be okay. Giving federal subsidies that are then used to lobby for pro-pollution public policy is not okay.

If only we could stop junk planning theory as well.

No Typewriters?

With gas prices coming down many transit agencies might be feeling a bit better about their balance sheets. But it's a short term deal. The oil cartel is looking to boost prices again. I feel like we need to invest more in electric transit including trolleybuses on core routes. Unfortunately, a trolleybus revolution does not seem to be upon us. Wires baby wires?

Individuals Make the Difference

In an article in the Wall Street Journal (Via City Fix), it seems as if Americans control their Carbon Destiny.

U.S. consumers have direct or indirect control over 65% of the country's greenhouse-gas emissions, according to new statistics tallied by consultant McKinsey & Co. The figure for consumers in the rest of the world is just 43%. Americans, largely because of how they drive and how they build and use their homes and offices, lead some of the most energy-intensive lives in the world.

It's not just how they drive and build, it's where. The placement is the greatest determinant. Driving cars a long distance to work and the store versus walking can make a difference.

Passenger cars account for 17% of U.S. emissions -- something consumers could affect by driving more-efficient cars or by driving less. Residential buildings and appliances contribute another 17% of emissions, underscoring the impact consumers could have if they lived in smaller buildings, or added more insulation, or bought a more energy-efficient model next time they replaced their washing machine.