Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the
upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
The latest report looks at 2001. It found that about half of the time we spend in traffic jams is due
to delays caused by accidents, vehicle breakdowns, weather and construction. But researchers at
the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A and M University found that people are driving
farther to work and they’re also making more trips. Instead of combining trips to the bank, the
grocery store and the cleaners, more and more drivers tend to make separate trips, putting more
cars on the road at a time. David Schrank is one of the researchers. He says it ends up being a
huge waste of fuel.
“In 2001, almost five-point-seven billion gallons of fuel — that’s with a ‘b’– were wasted in
traffic congestion in 75 urban areas in the United States.”
And the study estimates we all spent more time, three-and-a-half billion hours, stuck in traffic
during the year.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Transportation experts say new toll lanes are needed to relieve traffic congestion around major cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Transportation experts say new toll lanes are needed to relieve traffic congestion around
major cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham:
The experts say it would be a market-based solution. If you want to avoid heavy traffic,
you can pull your car into a voluntary toll lane and pay for the privilege of going faster.
Rob Atkinson is with Progressive Policy Institute, and is one of the experts who testified
before a congressional committee about the idea.
“You would expand those highways and add a couple lanes in each direction, but those
lanes would be tolled. So if you don’t want to pay the toll, you can just stay in the regular
lanes and actually you’d be a lot better off because there’d be people who would move from
those lanes – the free lanes – over to the tolled lanes. So it’s sort of one of those win-win
situations.”
Atkinson says gasoline taxes and other fees don’t pay the full cost of roads, so an alternative
such as voluntary toll lanes would help get closer to paying the actual cost of commuting.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
This map is used by car sharing members
in Ottawa, Ontario. It shows the location of cars available for pick-up (Image courtesy of Vrtucar – Ottawa, Ontario).
Cars are among the largest polluters in the world. They contribute to the smog that hangs over many large cities and they’re a major culprit in the creation of greenhouse gas emissions. But most of us are reluctant to give up our cars altogether. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, a growing number of North Americans are opting to share a car instead:
Transcript
Cars are among the largest polluters in the world. They contribute to the smog that hangs over
many large cities and they’re a major culprit in the creation of greenhouse gas emissions. But
most of us are reluctant to give up our cars altogether. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, a growing number of North Americans are opting to share a car instead:
(sound of stroller)
Nathalie Buu is pushing a stroller past the shops in a trendy neighborhood in Canada’s capital,
Ottawa. She’s heading for a car which is parked about four blocks from her apartment. It’s a
Toyota Echo and she shares it with about 15 other people. When she gets to the parking lot, Buu
wheels the stroller over to a black box attached to the side of a building.
“So you take the, umm, open the lock box and the keys for the car are inside.”
(key noise)
Buu belongs to Vrtucar, a car-sharing company based in Ottawa. There are almost 200
members, and they share 11 cars. The cars are parked all over the downtown area.
Buu has two kids and a regular commute. Still, she and her husband decided they didn’t really
need a vehicle.
“When we had a car, we just found it more of a headache to have to think about repairing it or
bringing it for an oil change, and having had a car in a busy city like Montreal, we don’t really
agree with having cars in the city. It’s just too busy a place and you should be able to use public
transport, I think.”
Nowadays, Buu takes the bus to her job as a doctor at a local hospital. And when she needs to
use a car, she calls an 800 number to reserve one.
The decision to share a vehicle has been quickly gaining in popularity. Car sharing began in post
war Europe. The first North American company opened in Quebec in 1994.
Today, there are 29 companies in North America, most of them in bigger cities like New York,
Chicago and Toronto.
Susan Shaheen is a researcher at UC-Berkeley who studies car-sharing. She says companies tend
to spring up in places where owning a car has become a hassle.
“These organizations tend to thrive when driving disincentives exist such as high parking costs or
congestion. Alternative modes are easily accessible, such as transit and something we see quite
often in the early adoption of this type of service is some environmental consciousness.”
Concern about the environment was one of the main reasons Wilson Wood and his business
partner Chris Bradshaw started Vrtucar. They bought the first car in 2000. They hope to have
twenty by the end of next year. The weird thing is, Wood says they’re actually opposed to
driving.
“I can’t think of two worse guys to run a car business. You know, we hate cars. We believe the
hierarchy of transportation needs should be: your first choice is your foot, your second choice is
your bike, your third choice is your bus, and the last choice should be an automobile.”
But Wood says the reality is, sometimes you need a car. He finds most members use them for
longer trips within the city, where public transportation isn’t convenient. Not surprisingly, the
cars are especially in demand on evenings and weekends. But the company keeps them in
parking lots spaced just a half mile apart. So if the closest car isn’t available, another one is
nearby.
Nathalie Buu says she uses the car for big shopping trips or to attend meetings in the suburbs.
And she says she rarely has trouble getting one.
“I tend to be last minute and I’ll just call and say is the car available right now? And very often it
is. I’ve never had a problem that way, which has been great.”
Buu says car sharing is cheaper for them as well. They don’t have a car payment. They don’t pay
for parking, insurance, maintenance or gas on a car they’d only use a few times a month.
However, they do pay fees. It starts with a 500 dollar insurance deductible which is returned if
you leave the company. There’s also a monthly fee of either 10, 20 or 30 dollars, depending on
how often you drive. And you pay for time and distance, which averages about 15 dollars for a
three hour, 22-mile trip.
It’s cheaper than renting a car for the day. But still, 15 bucks may seem a bit pricey for 3 hours in
a car. Make this argument to Wilson Wood and he’ll pull out figures from the Canadian
Automobile Association. They estimate it costs about 5 thousand dollars a year to own a new car.
Plus, Wood argues, car share members use their cars more wisely.
“Our members are making more efficient and more environmentally intelligent choices because
they’re bundling their trips. They say, ‘oh geez, I know I’ve only got the car once this week and
I’m going to take it for 2 hours on Friday afternoon after work so I’m going to do this, this and
this.'”
(sound in car)
Not everyone joins just to save money.
Nathalie Buu says her choice was a more personal one.
“If everybody was doing this sort of thing, then we’d have less pollution in the cities. And if
you’re thinking about the future, not only your future but the future of our own kids and the air
they’re breathing and the life they’ll live, I think it’s important to think about that and not just our
immediate needs.”
But it’s not always easy. And Buu says that’s okay. Because she feels like she’s helping to create
the kind of environment that she’d like to live in.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
Cities around the world are taking part in a special celebration this month…promoting the idea of life without automobiles. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has more on what’s known as “World Car Free Days”:
Transcript
Cities around the world are taking part in a special celebration this
Month, promoting the idea of life without automobiles. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has more on what’s known as World
Car-Free Days:
Alternative transportation advocates environmentalists and bicycle
enthusiasts are pulling together over the next couple of weeks to get
more people thinking about the benefits of life without cars.
Events celebrating the idea will be held throughout North America this
week. Some cities, like Chicago, are expected to have critical mass
bike rides where hundreds of bicyclists will purposely slow car traffic
on major streets by riding in unison. About a thousand riders took
part in Chicago’s last such event in late August. Other events in the
Great Lakes region are scheduled to take place in Madison, Wisconsin
and Hamilton, Ontario.
This week also marks the 10th anniversary of the first ever critical
mass ride…held in San Francisco in 1992.
Street parties, public gift exchanges and theatre performances are also
planned for locations around the United States and the rest of the
world.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jerome Vaughn.
In the mid-1960’s, the federal government started requiring metropolitan areas to come up with regional plans in order to get government grants for everything from highways to housing. That forced officials from large cities and from the suburbs to sit down at the same table (in many cases for the first time) and think about what was best for the entire region; not just their own town. From this effort, sprang the regional planning movement, but things aren’t always easy, and certainly don’t always go ‘according to plan.’ The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on one region’s attempt to plan for growth:
There are four major regional planning orgnizations in the Chicago metro area:
In the
mid-1960’s, the federal government started requiring metropolitan areas to come up with regional plans in order to get government grants for everything from highways to housing. That forced officials from large cities and from the suburbs to sit down at the same table — in many cases for the first time — and think about what was best for the entire region, not just their own town. From this effort, sprang the regional planning movement. But things aren’t always easy and certainly don’t always go ‘according to plan.’ The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on one region’s attempt to plan for growth:
If you were to gather around the coffee pot in the morning at just about any place of business in just about any suburb of just about any big city, the topic of conversation would probably not be the weather, or last night’s big game, or even politics. Nope. More than likely it would be about how long it took to get to work. Lots of people drive an hour, ninety minutes, or even longer to make the commute. So, why not move closer, you might ask. The answer could very well be “Can’t afford it.”
Housing costs in many suburbs are so high that the people who teach the kids, fight the fires, and fix the cars in the nice suburbs have to live in other less affluent communities where housing is cheaper. That’s because city officials in many suburbs encourage the building of expensive houses on big lots because it means a better tax base. But that also means many workers need to hop in their cars to get to work in those fancy suburbs.
Of course, when thousands of cars line up bumper to bumper to make the commute, you get traffic congestion.
“If you think it’s bad now, just wait. It’s gonna get worse.”
That’s Frank Beale. He’s the Executive Director of a group named Chicago Metropolis 2020. Metropolis 2020 put together a plan that looked at the Chicago area’s growth patterns and came up with some pretty dire forecasts. According to the study, if the Chicago region conducts business as usual, by the year 2030 there will be a 75-percent increase in auto miles traveled for work, shopping, and normal everyday trips. The time it takes to drive to work will be up 27-percent. And only about seven-and-a-half percent of housing units will be within walking distance of mass transit.
Beale says there’s seems to be a disconnect between local governments’ decisions to encourage big, expensive houses and the resulting need for more roads and additional lanes of traffic to handle all the commuters.
“More equitable
distribution of affordable housing and the employment centers would diminish the demand on the transportation systems. We seem to always only talk about roads. But, we only need roads because of how we’ve configured the land in the region.” Beyond the travel concerns, business as usual — according to the Metropolis 2020 study — means another 383 square miles of farmland will become subdivisions and strip malls in less than 30 years.
Organizations such as Metropolis 2020 are working together to try to educate and persuade the Chicago region’s 275 suburban mayors that the decisions they make will have an effect on the whole region.
Larry Christmas was once one of those mayors. He’s also spent his career running or working for regional planning agencies. He says as a mayor, it’s hard to think about the larger region when you are working to bring good growth to your town. It’s especially hard when regional planners want you to give up local control of land-use for the betterment of the larger region.
“And that’s something the communities don’t want to give up lightly even if there’s a regional argument that the collective local decisions may add up to bad regional development patterns.”
So, those looking at the big picture have their work cut out for them. The regional planners spend a lot of time at meetings with local officials, putting together roundtables to explain plans and trying to schedule meetings between antagonists.
One of the partners of Metropolis 2020 is the Metropolitan Planning Council. Executive Director Mary Sue Barrett says sitting down with those different interests and getting them to consider the reasons for bending a little here and there to adhere to a regional plan can pay off.
“To put it in practical terms, if you can get an environmentalist and a homebuilder and a mayor to agree on something, you can probably go get it done. And that’s what we try to do.”
And the regional planners try to get the mayors to listen on topics ranging from fair and equitable housing, to public transportation, and even taxing systems that sometimes encourage bad development with tax breaks.
But given the kind of expansive sprawl that continues to plague the Chicago metropolitan area, there’s still one question you have to ask of people such as Frank Beale with Chicago Metropolis 2020. That is: who’s listening?
“Well, the general assembly, the legislators are listening, the Mayor, the 275 suburban mayors are listening. They don’t always agree, but they’re listening.”
And as long as they keep listening, the people looking for better regional planning will keep trying to persuade the cities in the suburbs there’s a better way.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
States in the Midwest are looking at a plan to link cities with faster passenger rail. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports…the plan would cost billions of dollars, but its backers say it will better serve mid-sized cities.
