Transportation: A New Paradigm for the 21^st Century

By Dom Nozzi

As we prepare to enter the 21st Century, it would serve us well to shift our thinking about developing a transportation system that meet the needs of the new millennium.
Our ability to achieve a sustainable, livable future for Gainesville and Alachua County in the 21st Century will hinge on whether we can adapt to a new and exciting "paradigm" sweeping across our nation.
How does our thinking need to change to embrace this newly emerging transportation paradigm for the 21st Century?
First, 20^th Century thinking about transportation has made us too dependent on our cars.
Extreme overdependence on cars, steep car subsidies, and overdesigning for cars now means that in cities such as Gainesville, cars are the leading cause of air pollution, noise pollution, accidental injuries and deaths, strip commercial development, sprawl into remote outlying areas, financial strain for local governments and households, and overdependence on foreign oil -- not to mention a growth in urban ugliness.
Clearly, our marriage to cars is unsustainable for our environment, our economy, and our quality of life.
The emerging, 21^st Century paradigm includes the freedom of transportation choices for all of us -- including people who can drive a car, seniors, children, individuals with disabilities, and the poor. Transportation choices will help our community once again become sustainable, unique, attractive, livable and affordable. In other words, a place in which we can take pride.
By contrast to the 20^th Century, the 21^st Century can be one of moderation, equity, adaptability and lots of transportation choices, which are essential characteristics of a stable, sustainable environment.
The 20^th Century thinking concludes that the way to effectively ease congestion, reverse excessive energy consumption and eliminate air pollution problems is to increase road capacity by widening roads and creating one-way streets; "timing" signal lights to promote "free-flowing" traffic, and provide abundant and free parking at all destinations.
But for a more livable 21^st Century, we need to move away from these strategies because they give us no alternative but to drive a car. Expanding transportation choices will be more economical, give us equity and improve our quality of life.
Many recent studies are finding that increasing supply (primarily by widening roads) eases congestion for only a tiny period of time, after which the congestion becomes worse than before we spent millions to "correct" the problem.
Anthony Downs calls it "The Triple Convergence." We inevitably get the Triple Convergence when we add capacity to our transportation system, so every time we widen crowded roads, we make things worse.
An important corollary here is that transportation drives land use-not regulations or land use plans. It is our transportation system that will primarily determine if we have livable, safe streets, and if we will avoid costly sprawl into outlying, environmentally sensitive areas.

The Triple Convergence states that 3 things inevitably happen when we widen a road:

1. Drivers who formerly used alternative routes during rush hour switch to the widened road.
2. Drivers who formerly traveled just before or after rush hour start traveling during rush hour.
3. Some commuters who used to ride the bus or bicycle now switch to driving, since it has now become faster to drive.

The phenomenon is called "induced traffic:" Ironically, we inevitably get more vehicle trips after widening roads.
When we take into account the area-wide impacts and changes in behavior that occur when we do things like widen roads, we find that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
Transportation is truly a zero-sum game. Nearly always, when we make it easier to drive a car, we make it harder to travel another way. This profoundly modifies behavior and helps explain why bigger roads make things worse.
We should not be fooled into the self-fulfilling prophecy that we are all doomed to live a life of extreme car dependence, wherein we are forced to make every trip, no matter how trivial, by car.
Not only does widening roads make things worse, but as noted urban designers Victor Dover and Andres Duany point out, it is impossible to provide "enough" parking, no matter how many spaces we add.
For example, there are currently more cars than people in Alachua County, and each car needs approximately 7 parking spaces to which it is driven. If every destination has a huge, "big box" retail parking lot, everyone will drive everywhere.
Dover likens it to an addiction to narcotic drugs. The parking "fix" is never enough to satisfy you. You must always get a bigger fix in the future for the same effect. Similarly, you can never widen roads enough (due to "induced traffic").
Fortunately, there are some critically important 21st Century remedies that will give us a world that is more sustainable, one in which we strive to make people happy instead of cars:

*Quieter, safer, more sociable neighborhoods that are easy to walk around in.
*A citywide greenway network for bicycles, pedestrians, and people with disabilities, which, on a regional basis, becomes an "Emerald Necklace" adorning our city.
*Retrofitting our shopping centers to be more like walkable urban villages.
*More citywide traffic calming, so that cars behave better by moving more slowly, safely, and quietly.
*More livable and moderately higher residential densities.
*More equity and fairness in terms of how our transportation system is paid for, including more equitable taxation of gasoline.
*More frequent and reliable bus service.
*A mix of residences, offices and retail uses clustered around our bus stops and activity centers
*More narrow streets and on-street parking.
*More bus passes for students, employees, neighborhoods.
*Connected streets and alleys (less cul-de-sacs and gated subdivisions).
*Less drive-throughs and more walk-ups.
Our recipe for success lies in our ability to achieve these goals. It also lies in realizing that quality of life is a powerful economic engine that will bring us a lasting prosperity, a strong sense of community pride, and a livable, sustainable Gainesville.