15 Sep Okeechobee redo requires expert advice

Posted at 16:06h in News by bflanigan

By Timothy Hullihan

“Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity,” remarked Lewis Mumford. That was in the 1950s. The majority opinion on solving traffic con-gestion, however, has not improved much in 70 years.

This quote came to mind when I read the Post’s Sept. 13 report stating that the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency is soliciting public comment on Okeechobee Boulevard as part of a traffic study. Fortunately, there is 70 years of expert commentary on the harm cars-only transportation corridors cause –much of it written in the last 10-years, easily accessible to read and learn from.

If the Agency were to request input from the industry experts I quote below, their report could include the following list of facts relevant not only to Okeecho-bee Boulevard’s future, but the future of the planet:

  • “We conclude that an increased pro-vision of roads … is unlikely to relieve congestion,” and, “…this research elimi-nates [road] capacity expansions…as policies to combat traffic congestion.” These two sentences are from the con-clusion in a massive economic analysis of road expansion expenditures by 228 U.S. Cities, conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2009.(Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner, Lead Economists);
  • 12,000 deaths and injuries to chil-dren are caused by cars annually; nearly 50% of those happen because the streets we ask children to navigate are not de-signed for them to do so safely. (National Institutes of Health);
  • Car-dominated transportation systems are discriminatory against the young, old, and poor because there is an age range in which driving is permitted, and many cannot afford the average$800-dollar per month total cost to own, insure and operate a car;
  • 27% of carbon emissions come from the cars we drive. (EPA);
  • We have 280 million cars in America, and an estimated 2 billion parking spaces – 7 spaces for every car. (Donald Shoup, UCLA);
  • Cities built before 1940 used land 80% for people, 20% for transportation. Today, with transportation systems de-signed predominately for cars, 80% of newly developed land is used for trans-portation and parking, and 20% for peo-ple. (Charles Marohn, Strong Towns). We consume land at four times the rate of any time in human history to accommodate cars;
  • Much of the land we consume is farmland and it cannot be replaced. Shrinking farmland on a planet with a growing population is incredibly short-sighted.
  • Consuming forested land shrinks a much-needed source of clean air and sun protection;
  • Consuming wetlands shrinks an important source of clean water;
  • A person driving alone in a standard-sized car needs approximately 720 square feet of asphalt to move safely down a highway. A half-filled bus needs 1,200 square feet, but moves 20 more people – 720 sq. ft. per person versus 57 sq. ft. per person, or an efficiency gain of 1,263%;
  • The Brooklyn Bridge at its peak carried 400,000 people per day. Today it moves just 170,000 people per day. Why? It is almost exclusively used by cars. (Jeff Speck)
  • The primary obstacle to the healthi-est forms of transportation, walking and biking is the lack of safe, continuous and connected infrastructure – infrastruc-ture that costs a fraction of what car in-frastructure costs. (Jeff Speck);
  • Copenhagen, a famously bike-friendly place, spends 4% of Gross Do-mestic Product on transportation while a comparable American city, Houston, spends 14% of GDP on building, expand-ing and maintaining car infrastructure. That 10% delta in GDP spending is billions of dollars that could be spent on other things Americans need. (Patrick Kennedy).

I urge the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency to seek guidance from leading transportation consultants ref-erenced above for its Okeechobee Boule-vard study. Whether in Palm Beach County, Los Angeles, Houston, Bogota or Beijing, cars are killing our planet. We cannot wait another generation to change the way we plan communities, envision transportation and prioritize land conservation.