Tag Archives: driving

The challenges of Going Solo in the suburbs

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Sociologist Eric Klinenberg argues that it is particularly difficult to live alone in the suburbs:

Q: What do cities and the housing industry need to be thinking about in terms of homes for this wave of single people?

A: One thing I worry about is that we have built suburban areas that won’t fit our future lifestyles. I interviewed many older people who live alone in suburban areas who discovered that they weren’t good places to be when their children moved away because they tended not to have good areas for walking and often were far from public transportation. The houses themselves were too big, making them expensive to heat and cool; more house than most people need. And the suburbs are reluctant to retrofit. They don’t want to change their zoning laws to deal with reality.

The thing I’m most concerned about is housing for poor people of any age who wind up living alone. We need to rethink this whole idea of the single-room-occupancy building. I write in my book about one very successful SRO experiment in New York that had a mix of incomes, not just the otherwise-homeless people who today are associated with SROs. It became sort of a vertical village and ended up being replicated in other places.

We need to design more housing like that. But it’s expensive, and cities are strapped for resources. And it’s not like the group that needs it the most has any political clout; they’re the most vulnerable people in our society.

Klinenberg brings up an issue that has been raised for decades: certain age groups don’t do well in the suburbs. If I remember correctly, Herbert Gans brings this up in the classic study The Levittowners and these issues are also raised in Suburban Nation by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck. These observers suggest two groups are particularly disadvantaged: teenagers who can’t yet drive and who want freedom and the elderly who can no longer drive and are now more isolated in their single-family homes. Both of these groups are united by the necessity of driving in the suburbs and how driving is tied to completing daily subsistence tasks (such as getting food) as well as social interaction.

As Klinenberg suggests, building this kind of alternative housing in the suburbs (and cities) will be difficult. Not only is it expensive but I imagine many suburbanites would not desire such housing near their own houses. At the same time, this is a recognized problem in a number of communities: how can communities help the elderly live in the towns they have spent much of their lives in?

Fewer teenagers and young adults getting their driver’s license

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The Financial Times cite some interesting statistics about the rise in the number of teenagers and young adults who are not getting their driver’s licenses. While a number of explanatory factors are cited such as economic conditions, not needing cars as much because of social media, and young adults rejecting direct advertising from car makers, I’m more interested in another issue: what does this say about driving as a rite of passage as part of the transition from being a teenager to becoming an adult? This is well ingrained in American culture and lore but if fewer young adults see it as worthwhile, it could practically wipe the genre of cliched high school movies by itself. Forget about emerging adults delaying marriage; some don’t even want to be able to drive!

There is no mention of this in the article but I would be interested to know the spatial distribution of 16-34 year olds in the United States. It is much easier to go without a car in a denser, more urban setting. Does this mean that compared to the general population, a higher percentage of this age group lives in such denser settings?

Ruminating on the American parking lot

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Here is part of a review of a new book that discusses better ways to design large-scale parking lots:

Mr. Ben-Joseph does offer some parking-lot success stories, few that there are. He introduces us to the Herman Miller factory in Cherokee County, Ga., whose segmented, 550-car lot is sympathetically integrated into the surrounding woodscape. He also approvingly notes the canopied car plaza in front of the Dia:Beacon Museum in Beacon, N.Y. (a collaboration between American artist Robert Irwin and the architecture firm OpenOffice), where the angled planters separating the parking spaces point the way to the museum entrance. Renzo Piano, redesigning the old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin, Italy, took a similar approach, creating dense and splendid colonnades of trees…

Mr. Ben-Joseph is also guilty of sociological overreach. “Parking lots are a central part of our social and cultural life,” he writes, calling them “a modern-day common.” Wait, what? They are? Yes, teenagers gather in parking lots for one rite of adolescence or another: fighting, racing, dancing. True, community farmers markets spring up over the weekend in business and municipal parking lots; tailgating is a ritualized feasting before sporting events; RV drivers form impromptu villages in Wal-Mart parking lots, a practice known as “boondocking.”

But these interactions happen despite the forbidding nature of open parking lots, not because of them. I find parking lots to be intensely anti-social. I do not engage with strangers on my way to or from the car, and because these tracts are typically shelterless, there is no architectural cue as to where to congregate even if you wanted to. One can’t let go of a child’s hand in a parking lot for even a second. If you’re in a car, a parking lot is an obstacle course to negotiate. If you’re on foot, it’s a place to escape unscathed.

Surface parking lots don’t have to be the minimalist slabs of nowhere-ness we’ve grown accustomed to, Mr. Ben-Joseph suggests. Maybe. And yet there are few signs that this aspect of our infrastructure will get much better anytime soon. For now, I was glad to reach my car and drive away.

I think you could make a case that parking lots really do matter beyond what kind of social activity takes place in them. Thinking more broadly, parking lots represent the American love affair with the car and development based around driving. The zoning laws about the required number of parking spots suggest that one of the worst things we can imagine in everyday life is the lack of an easily available parking space. Shopping malls and big box stores and fast food restaurants are dependent on these giant lots. In cities, parking lots are often profitable holding operations until the land is profitable enough to justify a large development. Overall, the big parking lot is emblematic of a whole lifestyle built around cars and trucks that took over America starting in the 1920s.

Argument in Ottawa, Canada for parking as a human right

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Here is an overview of an argument made in Ottawa, Canada for the human right for a parking spot:

In a novel case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in Ottawa Monday, Ms. Howson argued that the city discriminated against her on the grounds of family status by not letting her build a parking pad in front of her house.

But city lawyers argued that Ms. Howson has never applied for a minor variance from the city’s committee of adjustment — the body legally able to consider her request — so she actually has never been denied anything…

Ms. Howson shares with a neighbour a narrow driveway that varies in width from 2.6 to 2.78 metres. It’s technically possible for her car — a 2.25-metre-wide Mazda 5 — to squeeze through the laneway.

But such manoeuvring is difficult at the best of times and impossible in winter because of snow and ice buildup, she said.

Under the current zoning, front-yard parking isn’t permitted on her street, which is in a heritage preservation district.

However, exceptions can be granted under certain circumstances.

Two years ago, Ms. Howson — a former investigator with the Ontario Human Rights Commission — approached the city to see if it would grant an exemption based of her family’s “special circumstances.”

The city’s refusal “constitutes discrimination on the grounds of family status,” she said.

While some might dismiss this quickly because it is a trivial application of the idea of human rights, this does seem like a bigger issue of zoning and who can grant exceptions. This woman may not win by casting this as a human rights issue but her argument does highlight how zoning and preservation districts can conflict with modern wants. Zoning may be an helpful tool for governments on a broad scale, but it also can lead to a large number of requests for variances and changes for specific properties and political accusations about who gets awarded variances and how long the process takes.

Also, this is a reminder of how important the car is in today’s society. In order to get around in many communities, a car is required and one needs a place to park a car. How much one should have to be inconvenienced or have to pay to park their car is another story but it does have to be factored into discussions about having and promoting an automobile society.

Driving today is much safer than in the past

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An article (“Safer Passage”) in the latest issue of Time has shows that the fatality rate from driving has dropped a lot over the years. Here is a description of the issue:

America’s roadways are safer than ever. The latest data show that traffic fatalities are at their lowest level since 1949 and that the death rate based on miles traveled is the lowest in history. But technologies such as active safety systems and advanced air bags are being offset by auto safety’s newest enemy: distracted drivers using electronic devices behind the wheel.

“We lost over 3,000 in 2010 to distraction-related crashes,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland says. “It’s a heightened risk to the public, and it’s growing exponentially.”

Some of the statistics cited in the story:

1. In 1950, there were 7.2 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. In 2010, the rate is 1.1. While Americans might be driving more on average today than in 1950 (I couldn’t find figures on this), the fatalities while driving has dropped nearly sevenfold.

2. Here is what causes traffic fatalities: 32% killed by drunk driving, 31% by speeding, 16% by distraction, and 11% by bad weather. It is interesting that much of the current debate about making driving safer deals with cell phones and distractions (see a recent article from the Chicago Tribune about new efforts in Illinois) while it is the third biggest threat. Perhaps policymakers could argue that getting rid of distractions if the cheapest or easier route compared to dealing with the first two issues.

3. According to this CDC report, there were 36,216 deaths in 2009 in motor vehicle accidents for a death rate of 11.8 per 100,000 Americans.

Americans seem willing to accept some risk in driving and generally welcome efforts to make cars safer. And the numbers have gone down quite a bit since 1950: driving is safer. At the same time, the fight over cell phones in cars is just heating up and we need more data to know whether cell phones are more distracting than other features found during driving (passengers, fiddling with the radio/GPS devices, talking to passengers, tiredness). In the end, this may be an odd costs-benefits tradeoff: restricting cell phone use may limit deaths but some will argue that too much is being given up (assuming that only others get in accidents while using cell phones?). Of course, one solution is to simply go to driverless cars but there are other hurdles to overcome there.

Transit-oriented development in the Boston area

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Transit-oriented development has been popular for years now and here is an update on this development strategy in the Boston area:

“We see a huge demand around Greater Boston. We’re working in communities from Winchester to Lawrence that are all working to develop vibrant urban villages around public transportation,” Leroux said. “An overwhelming number of people want to live in these types of places, and communities that don’t create them are less competitive for residents and jobs.”

Filling the need in Somerville, where the residential landscape consists mainly of three-decker homes, is Maxwell’s Green, which will feature 184 rental units with amenities to rival many downtown Boston luxury apartment buildings.

Near completion and ready for occupancy this September, the $52.5 million development sits on 5.5 acres and is located minutes from the Red Line stop at Davis Square and adjacent to the much- anticipated MBTA Green Line Extension’s Lowell Street station…

SouthField, one of the largest transit-oriented developments in Greater Boston, is on track for South Weymouth at the former naval air station.

The first phase of the project is already complete, with residents occupying both apartments and townhouses. The total cost of the project, including the homes already built, is targeted at about $2.5 billion, which includes 2,800 homes and 2 million square feet of commercial space.

The “urban village” concept has been around now for several decades. They are thought to be particularly attractive for young professionals who want to live in the suburbs or further away from the city core (partly because of cheaper prices), don’t yet want to buy a home (condos being easier to maintain), want mass transit access, and also want to be in more lively areas with some cultural and dining options.

These types of development are very popular in the Chicago suburbs are well, particularly along the railroad lines that radiate out from Chicago’s center. Many suburbs have sought to build multi-use developments (condos plus offices or small retail establishments) near their commuter train stations. While this means that the residents can access mass transit, it also provides more pedestrians and hopefully customers for the downtown. A number of suburbs have pursued these developments as part of a downtown revitalization strategy.

I would be interested to see how studies about how much these developments reduce traffic and congestion. Particularly in a suburban setting, a couple might be able to go down to one car (or none?) if both use mass transit a lot. However, while mass transit access to the city center might be great, there is often a lack of mass transit options across between suburbs.

I also wonder how much transit-oriented development succeeds because it is seen as trendy.

Some housing not so cheap when you factor in transportation costs

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Plenty of people may move to where the cheaper housing is located but this could come with higher transportation costs:

In Chicago’s transit-rich Ravenswood neighborhood, where there is an average of one automobile per household and 42 percent of commuters use transit, monthly transportation costs averaged $751 in the five-year period studied, the center determined.

Households in Marengo in McHenry County incur an average of $1,324 in transportation costs each month, the study found. Each household in Marengo, where transit ridership is less than 1 percent, also logs an average of 24,438 miles per year in their cars, versus 12,150 miles annually in Ravenswood.

When people are looking for a place to live, taking into account housing and transportation costs changes the affordability outlook significantly, said Scott Bernstein, the center’s president…

[From the print edition:] Some 69 percent of neighborhoods in the Chicago area are considered affordable under the traditional definition of housing affordability: rent or mortgage payments consuming no more than 30 percent of household income, the study said. But only 42 percent of the neighborhoods are considered affordable when housing and transportation costs are measured, it said…

The study also found that it is more difficult for a typical household in the U.S. to find an affordable place to live compared to a decade ago because incomes increased about half as much as transportation and housing costs since 2000.

This provides some data to back up Joel’s claim from earlier this week: life is cheaper (and perhaps better?) without a car.

What I find fascinating about this is that this report ties transportation costs to the idea of affordable housing. Typically, we only think about the cost of the housing itself but if you built affordable housing in the middle of a corn field 90 miles west of Chicago, those housing units won’t really help anyone.

At the same time, this is a trade-off many Americans seem willing to make: you pay less for your house and then pay more for transportation costs over time. Perhaps because the house is a significantly larger “one-time purchase” (you have repeated payments but they are somewhat fixed and you have already psychologically taken possession of the house even though you don’t own it) people can justify then paying more for transportation over time because the money trickles out and the costs are more variable. Plus, if you think of the home as one of the key pieces of the American Dream and Americans should love to drive anyway, this all could make some sense.

This is also a reminder that the cost for entry to the suburbs is not just about finding somewhere to live which often requires a sizable down payment and a mortgage. In order to get anywhere, whether it is a job or store or recreation area or church, one needs a car in the suburbs and one needs to have extra money on hand to deal with this. Without being able to pay for insurance, gas, maintenance, and somewhere to park (which is factored into a parking space or the driveway/garage that is factored into the mortgage), there is plenty of extra cost involved with having a car. This reminds me of a story I read recently about an affordable car program in Wisconsin where the state or some agency was providing cheap but reliable cars to people to help cover these growing and important transportation costs.

A reduced Federal tax break for commuters?

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Many would argue that the United States has clearly privileged the suburbs in its fiscal policies including helping to make mortgages more available and providing money for highway funding. At the same time, buried within Washington’s recent debate over tax cuts is a little tax break for commuters:

The amount of income that commuters who use mass transit will be eligible to shelter from taxes to pay their fares drops on Jan. 1 to $125 a month from the current $230 a month, while the tax-free parking benefit for drivers will increase from $230 to $240 a month, officials said today.

The steep reduction in the transit provision is due to Congress’ failure to renew the higher limit in the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, officials said, adding that they are hopeful lawmakers will approve a higher limit sometime in 2012…

The cut in benefits will have a similar effect as a fare increase because riders whose employers participate in the transit benefits program will be able to shield a maximum of $1,500 in income from taxes in 2012, down from $2,760 this year.

It interesting that these changes would boost the break for parking/driving to work while lowering the benefits for mass transit (perhaps temporarily). I bet this law has a fascinating history.

If the public is not particularly interested in tax breaks for large corporations, are they in favor of tax benefits for commuting? Does the approval for this depend on whether someone claims the tax break?

Thinking about the larger topic, it would be interesting to see how much the average driver benefits or pays for driving and mass transit. How much of a typical tax burden goes for transportation? How much does the average driver or mass-transit commuter get in return for the tax money that they pay in? Of course, we could have a much longer discussion about what the government should promote in its policies but I assume this is not at the top of the discussion pile in Washington.

Improving suburban roads in Montgomery County

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The suburbs are full of roads. But, as many have noted, these roads are primarily built for the fastest automobile speeds between Points A and B. Montgomery County, Maryland has put together a plan to improve their roadways:

As a result, Montgomery has actually been in the business of “retrofitting” or “repairing” the suburbs (very gradually, to be sure) since before planners began to call it that. Now, it has undertaken a pilot study on two stretches of roadway in the county to evaluate the use of green infrastructure – strategically placed vegetation and other methods that reduce polluted runoff by using or mimicking natural hydrology – along with measures to better accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists. One is an arterial road that goes through residential areas, the other a wide commercial street. Both showed there was much potential, and Montgomery is now planning to integrate more environmental features into its streets…

Note that the changes are not extensive, for the most part, but incremental: subtle narrowing of traffic lanes to slow auto speed; plantings in medians, along sidewalks and in parking lots to capture and filter rainwater; bike lanes and wider sidewalks to accommodate non-motorized users; striping to mark a people-first pedestrian lane where a sidewalk may not be feasible…

There’s a lot to like about Montgomery’s initiative, including that it brings together three relatively new and successful – but often independently successful – lines of sustainability thinking and planning: redesigning suburbs; green infrastructure; and “complete streets” that accommodate all types of users. It reminds us that the greatest potential for sustainable communities lies with the integration of ideas and purposes. I hope this kind of initiative continues to catch on.

This seems to include a number of techniques New Urbanists have talked about for years.

What I like best about this is that it is hard to argue against these changes. Generally, busy roads are either nondescript or unattractive so these changes help improve the aesthetics. Runoff is a common suburban problem and no one likes having to drive through big puddles. Carving out space for other users of the roads would appeal to a lot of people (as long as the bikers and drivers can get along – not a guarantee in some places). And this should be safer as we know that narrower roads tend to slow drivers down.

The only problem that I could envision: how much do these subtle but helpful changes cost? It might be a good amount of money upfront but then reduced costs (and perhaps even savings?) down the road (fewer accidents, fewer cars on the road so less road maintenance, etc.). Are taxpayers willing to pay to improve already pretty good roads (generally defined as very drivable and fast)?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how much they expand the program.

Sociologist: phone call or text like “catnip” for humans

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Amidst a larger conversation about using cell phones in vehicles, a sociologist gets at an interesting question: why can’t people resist the allure of cell phones?

The lure of multitasking may be, in at least one respect, more powerful for drivers than for other people, said Clifford Nass, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies electronic distraction. Drivers are typically isolated and alone, he said, and humans are fundamentally social animals.

The ring of a phone or the ping of a text becomes a promise of human connection, which is “like catnip for humans,” Nass said.

“When you tap into a totally fundamental, universal human impulse,” he added, “it’s very hard to stop.”

Humans are indeed social animals and driving is uniquely isolating. On one hand, it is an oddly social activity as drivers must interact with other drivers and there is an interesting set of non-verbal interactions. On the other hand, one is in a sealed, moving vehicle and it may be one of the few regular moments people have where they are not near enough to talk to other people. Couldn’t someone examine this hypothesis by looking at how many cell phone caused or influenced car accidents took place when there was a solo driver?

It would be interesting to see how people respond to cell phones differently when alone opposed to in more social settings where they have opportunities to interact with people.

I imagine this could easily become a marketing campaign for cell phones: your phone is “a promise of human connection.” Indeed, a number of cell phone campaigns have stressed how they bring people together. The commercials might not add this but here is the kicker: sometimes this urge to make a human connection might be be problematic…