Epa Reviewing Car Fuel Economy Tests

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at whether the gas mileage estimates that appear on the window stickers of new cars are over-inflated. The agency responded to a petition from a California environmental group. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at whether the gas
mileage estimates that appear on the window stickers of new cars are
over-inflated. The agency responded to a petition from a California
environmental group. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman
reports:


The Bluewater Network says that cars and trucks actually get as much as
twenty percent fewer miles per gallon than EPA window stickers suggest.
Spokesperson Elisa Lynch says that’s because driving patterns have changed
since the current testing system was set up in the mid ’80s.


“There’s been increased urbanization, there are higher speed limits, and more
traffic congestion, and all of these are factors that affect your fuel
economy when you’re out there driving in the real world.”


The EPA is seeking public comment on its testing procedure. EPA
spokesperson John Millet says that part of the process will wrap up in late
July.


“After that period, EPA will go through what we anticipate will be
quite a lot of information, and that’s going to take some time.”


Millet says the EPA might decide its current testing system is just fine.
But if that’s not the case, it could still be up to three years before
another system is in place.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.

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Sprawling Cities, Sprawling Waistlines

  • Many sidewalks end abruptly and go nowhere. Health experts are saying sprawling urban areas need to be designed so that sidewalks and bike paths are connected to community destinations. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Public health officials are calling for changes in how we design communities. They say poorly designed development contributes to higher obesity rates, the early onset of diabetes, and other health problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Public health officials are calling for changes in how we design communities. They
say poorly
designed development contributes to higher obesity rates, the early onset of
diabetes, and other
health problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


For the past few decades most suburban developments have been about convenience.
Shopping
should be just a short drive away…. parks, just a short drive away… school just a
short drive
away. Four-lane highways have replaced two lane streets to relieve congestion. If
you’re in a
car, other than dealing with the headaches of traffic, getting places isn’t that bad.


But… if you’re on a bike… or walking… crossing those multi-lane roads at busy
intersections is
daunting for adults… let alone children. And often, sidewalks are built, but
sometimes they just
end. A lot of times, sidewalks in a sprawling area never really go anywhere. So,
people don’t
ride their bicycles or walk to destinations. It’s just not convenient… and
sometimes it’s
downright hazardous.


Ellen Bassett is with the Urban and Regional Planning Program at Michigan State
University.


“Because we’re building things further and further apart without connectivity that
doesn’t avail
people to walk or to use their bicycles; they have to drive everywhere. We’re
creating
environments where people exercise less, are less and less active.”


And the result has contributed to a decline in the overall fitness of Americans.
That’s most
evident in children. Kids today are fatter. The rate of obesity is up. Early onset
of diabetes is up.
Part of that is due to kids watching too much television… sitting around playing
computer
games… and so on. But… not being able to ride a bike to school… or being able to
walk to the
park to play soccer… contributes to health problems because kids don’t get enough
exercise in
their daily routines.


Richard Killingsworth is the director of Active Living by Design. The program works
to
incorporate physical activity into everyday lives through the way we design
communities.
Killingsworth says somewhere along the line we came to accept that it made sense to
stop
walking places and instead drive to the health club.


“Now we’ve embraced the notion that we drive to destinations to do physical activity
as opposed
to having it as a part of our everyday lifestyle. So, we’ve essentially built an
environment that
accommodates something that is not physically active and accommodates one mode of
transportation, that’s the automobile.”


Killingsworth consults with urban designers, encouraging them to think about more
than whether
it’s a convenient drive… but to think about whether a neighborhood is designed to
make it a
convenient walk to school… or the park.


“We’ve built upon the notion that the car is king and it should be the only way and
unfortunately
we cannot sustain that for much longer. We need to look at other viable modes and as
we build, if
we build more compactly, a viable mode and a more efficient mode clearly would be
walking or
bicycling.”


And, increasingly, urban planners are being urged by physical fitness experts to
think about
public health. They say making sure there’s a network of sidewalks and bike paths
that actually
connect the community’s destinations is worth the cost.


Risa Wilkerson is with the Michigan Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health
and Sports.
She’s taken an active interest in land use planning. She says it’s cheaper to design
communities
that encourage physical activity than it is for society to pay the health care costs
caused by too
little exercise. She argues she’s not asking for that much.


“That children have sidewalks that are buffered between the road with a row of trees
and grass,
that the parks are connected to the schools and to homes and that people could walk
to get a
gallon of milk if they chose to or to go down and visit their neighbor at the local
coffee shop and
they wouldn’t have to get into their automobile for a quarter-of-a-mile trip.”


Wilkerson says health care costs are skyrocketing. Designing communities that
encourage
walking or bicycling are investments in prevention of the health problems caused by
too little
exercise. She adds the health care costs of poorly designed areas is just the
beginning.


“And then you’ve got pollution costs from automobile emission. It goes on and on in
terms of,
you know, the savings if we get people out walking or biking — cleaner air. If you
put all of those
together, I mean there’s just — it’s a phenomenal case to make.”


Advocates of incorporating more sidewalks, bike paths, and safer intersections into
new
developments says local governments should also look at existing suburbs too… to see
if those
neighborhoods can’t be retro-fitted to include a few sidewalks and safe crossings
that can connect
shopping, schools, and parks to homes. That way the walk of the day can be a little
farther than
just from the front door to the car in the driveway.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

SPRAWLING CITIES, SPRAWLING WAISTLINES (Short Version)

Urban planners and fitness experts are beginning to compare notes about how suburban development affects health. They’re finding that urban sprawl discourages exercise such as biking and walking. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Urban planners and fitness experts are beginning to compare notes about how suburban
development affects health. They’re finding that urban sprawl discourages exercise
such as
biking and walking. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Not nearly as many kids ride their bikes to school today as kids did a generation
ago. That’s
because sprawling areas – complete with four lane roads – are designed for cars. not
for bikes.


Risa Wilkerson is with the Michigan Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health
and Sports.
She says fitness experts say there are advantages to building neighborhoods more
friendly to
bicyclists and pedestrians.


“Carpooling your child everywhere you go is a hard life to have if your child could
walk to their
soccer game while the other child walks to piano practice and you stay home and
start to cook a
healthy dinner or you have a chance to go ride your bike.”


The experts say the way neighborhoods are designed now could be contributing to health
problems in kids such as obesity, the early onset of diabetes, and asthma that might
be aggravated
by auto emissions.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Small Towns Invite Sprawl

  • Eleven million acres of prime farmland were lost to urban sprawl in a 15 year period. Some small cities are embracing the growth and helping developers circumvent so-called Smart Growth restrictions on sprawl.

Researchers have found that small towns hungry for new tax dollars are making it possible for developers to get around Smart Growth plans. Often the result is urban sprawl that paves over farmland and natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the story:

Transcript

Researchers have found that small towns hungry for new tax dollars are making it possible for developers to get around Smart Growth Plans. Often the result is urban sprawl that paves over farmland and natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Despite the best efforts of some politicians to slow down the pace of turning farmland into suburbia, the 2000 Census shows population growth is exploding at the edges of Metropolitan areas, and all those people need somewhere to live and shop. So, in the Midwest, often housing developments and shopping malls are built where corn or soybeans grew just the year before.


For example, Kane County, Illinois, as recently as the 1970’s was predominately farmland. Now with more and more people moving there, only about half the county is left for farming.


Randall Road cuts through the heart of the county, although housing developments and retail stores are starting to infringe on the country setting, on one side of the road you can still see rows of crops and pasture, and on the other side of Randall Road, it’s nearly solid shopping malls and subdivisions. But in the middle of all that development, there’s still one dairy farm. Mike Kenyon and his family still grow hay and corn, and milk cows here. But their fields are surrounded by three sprawling towns. Kenyon says Randall Road used to be the line where planners said urban sprawl would stop. They were so confident that they even said so in their planning document for the year 2020.


“And they drew a line in the county and they said ‘we want the growth to occur here and we want to maintain this as rural, as farms. Well, how did developers get around that? Well they go to a little village and they say ‘Well, we’ll put a big housing development over here. Please, annex us and this’ll be more revenue and they’ll even have a sewer system when we get done.’ So, that’s what happens; they kind of bribe the villages so they get around the 2020 plan.”


And that, Kenyon says, is what’s now happening on the other side of Randall Road where Kane County was supposed to remain rural. Kane County officials are trying to implement all kinds of programs to save the remaining farmland from urban sprawl, or at least keep urbanization to certain areas of the county. But at the town and village level, many local politicians see growth as nothing but good and are willing to expand their city limits to include developments. That’s because those developments help increase their tax revenue.


The story is not unique to the Chicago region. It’s being repeated throughout the Midwest and the Great Lakes, as well as across the United States.
So much so that millions, yes millions of acres of prime farmland in the U.S. have been lost in a little more than a decade. Rich Green is a geographer at Northern Illinois University. He’s been tracking the fringes of the ever-growing Chicago Metropolitan area. He’s been adding up just how much former cropland has been turned into suburban lawns and parking lots.


“What we found is this: the nation between 1982 and 1997, that’s a 15 year time period, lost about eleven million acres of prime farmland, cropland, to urban development.”


Green also found, perhaps coincidentally, that an identical amount of land, eleven million acres of rangeland was plowed up and put into crop production during the same period.


“What we’ve been looking at is losing the nation’s best farmland in places like Chicago and other metropolitan areas in the Midwest, and replacing it with marginal lands in the arid West which requires more inputs, particularly water, irrigation.”


Green says shifting farming to less productive and more environmentally damaging land might not be the intent of the small towns that want to grow, but that’s the apparent result.


Just off campus at Northern Illinois’ Social Sciences Research Institute, Director Harvey Smith says Midwest states such as Illinois should take the time to better learn and weigh the costs of continued urban sprawl.


“Economically, Illinois relies very, very heavily on its agriculture. And, it is also the case that a lot of the very rich farmland is in the northern tier of the state which is closest to the moving fringe of the suburbs.”


Many times government at a more regional level, such as at the county level, is struggling with balancing development and farmland preservation. Even though it’s something of a contradiction, Smith says the people who move to the suburbs’ fringes causing further urban sprawl, actually want to preserve some of the farmland.


“The fact is that many of the people who move into the suburbs, while they like the sort of scenic quality of a farm or two over the hill, aren’t in a position to stop the disappearance of the farms themselves. It requires cooperation between local and regional governmental agencies to make a real effort to protect these qualities that are likely to disappear if they don’t.”


For some towns, it’s too late to recover the rural character and small town charm they lost to development, but for those at the fringes of the sprawling large metro areas with adherence to Smart Growth planning, some planners believe there’s still the opportunity to preserve a little of the setting of the suburbs that drew so many people there in the first place.

SMALL TOWNS INVITE SPRAWL (Short Version)

  • Eleven million acres of prime farmland were lost to urban sprawl in a 15 year period. Some small cities are embracing the growth and helping developers circumvent so-called Smart Growth restrictions on sprawl.

The U.S. has lost millions of acres of productive farmland in the last decade to urban sprawl. Researchers say state and county officials are seeing Smart Growth plans circumvented by politicians in small cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The US has lost millions of acres of productive farmland in the last decade to urban sprawl. Researchers say state and county officials are seeing smart growth plans circumvented by politicians in small cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Most states have passed legislation or are looking at doing so to reduce urban sprawl. Even some counties are working to restrict development to certain areas. But often developers approach small cities, promising increased tax revenues and infrastructure if the town annexes large areas of surrounding land for the developers. Rich Green is a geographer at Northern Illinois University. He says some small town officials don’t see past their own city limits.


“And in some respects, they may overlook the regional concerns to benefit their own territory, developers, shopping malls, retailers, playing one municipality off the other in terms of getting the best deal to locate.”


And so long debated plans to manage growth become nothing more than lines on a map, while natural areas and farmland are replaced by subdivisions and parking lots. Green says that’s led to eleven million acres of prime farmland being taken out of production in the fertile Midwest and East in a 15 year period due to urban sprawl. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.