NHTSA reports that mobile phone use by drivers is, not surprisingly, up: eight percent of drivers are, at any given daylight time, talking first and driving maybe second (or third, or whatever). So why is it that it seems that half the drivers who suddenly cut me off — whether a right hook while cycling, or nudging past the stop line and into the crosswalk — are talking?

Bob Rackleff, a county commissioner in Leon County (Tallahasee), Florida, has put together an interesting paper on how auto dependence is draining Florida’s economy. (Full text is after the jump.) The Wall Street Journal earlier had an article on the Tampa region, which has the highest per-capita expenditures on transportation (an astonishing 23.2%!). That money leaks out of the state, as Florida neither makes cars nor drills nor refines oil. If even one-third of those transportation expenditures were invested in housing instead — an investment which tends, unlike cars, to grow in value — the resulting price rise would build lots of wealth within the state, and bring tax benefits due to the mortgage interest deduction.
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Maybe it’s only in LA, though. “Enhanced reading” to be staged on 5 March.

THE TREE, a new opera by PETER WING HEALEY

Synopsis: The spirit of a centuries-old oak tree on a ridge outside a small town falls in love with a poetic young man from the town.� She comes out of her tree and marries him when his first marriage falls apart.� They move to the big city where he will pursue his dream of becoming an architect.� His ex-wife, taking custody of their son, marries again, this time to a local developer.� When, years later, the developer decides to build a mall outside the now growing town it becomes clear that he plans to cut down the old tree.� The town is instantly polarized and the son joins with a band of tree-sitters to protest the construction.� The architect and the tree spirit watch helplessly as the situation deteriorates.� When the tree is finally felled she dies but in the process he receives the gift of a vision that will enable him to transform the world.

An exciting, contemporary re-telling of an ancient Shinto myth combined with the story of today�s struggle to save our old-growth forests and stop the sprawl.�� Tying together themes being addressed by a broad world movement chrystalising around such organizations as Smart Growth and Congress for a New Urbanism, The Tree attempts to sing about the unthinkable � can there be life without cars?

motorcycles vroom
smashing the evening calm
impressing no one
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Detroit is the most expensive US city to own a new car, according to a report by a “a management consultant specializing in transportation reimbursement.” (Talk about boutique consulting!) A 2005 Ford Taurus sedan driven 15,000 miles will cost $11,114 and Detroit and $10,016 in Los Angeles, the runner-up.

By contrast, $11,114 could buy:
– 5,557 linked CTA rides, at $2 per ride (including two transfers). At 94 minutes per ride, that many rides would take the entire year to complete.
– 295.5 cab rides across Chicago, at $2 flag pull, $1.60 per mile, and 23.5 miles across town via Western. Alternatively, one could commute halfway across town by cab every workday.
– Quite a nice vacation for two: from Detroit to Fiji, plus 40 nights’ deluxe seaside accommodation. Or, if you prefer wandering, two round-the-world tickets, with 24 stops. (Lodging extra.)
– $172,600 in housing, assuming a 30-year mortgage at 5%.
– One heck of a bicycle.

Gregg Easterbrook in The New Republic makes the great case for more regulation of SUVs in the name of public health, safety, and welfare:

Perhaps the most tiresome defense of the SUV is, “No one can tell me what I can drive.” But, of course, government can tell you what you can drive and has been doing so for years. The Bill of Rights creates two specially protected areas of possessions: militia arms and just about anything — newspapers, magazines, books, movies, tickets to live performances — connected with political or artistic expression. But there’s no constitutional right to own devices society thinks you shouldn’t have (burglar tools, for example) or substances society thinks you shouldn’t have (dynamite, anthrax spores) or to operate machines that pose threats to others (you need a license to fly a plane or drive a bulldozer, and these licenses are hard to obtain). All kinds of products and purchases are regulated by law, and courts generally uphold such laws so long as they are reasonably related to the public good. The idea that there’s a right to own a monstrous personal conveyance that wastes gasoline, causes road rage, and, most significantly from the public-good standpoint, increases traffic fatalities, is nonsense…

If you wanted to buy a Hummer or an Escalade, put it up on blocks in your backyard, and use it for parties, that would be nobody’s business but your own. If you want to drive that vehicle on public roads, creating peril for others, then it becomes the public’s business. All kinds of rules have been passed regarding what can be operated on public roads, and courts have upheld these rules. In the cases of SUVs and pickup trucks, Congress has simply failed to enact adequate rules.

In fact, as some have observed, the SUV’s ubiquity is more because of, not in spite of, government regulation. As Joseph White recently noted in the Wall Street Journal:

For more than a decade, a growing number of families have opted for an SUV to carry themselves and all their gear from place to place, and government policies abetted that shift. Now the government’s safety messages are sending a signal to families that they would be better off to go back to being securely belted into the seats of large station wagons. Still, because of earlier regulatory decisions and marketing decisions made years ago, SUVs are more plentiful — and have better deals to offer — than big crossover wagons.

Just raising fuel economy by one-third could eliminate U.S. oil imports from the Persian Gulf within ten years, and that’s possible not only using existing technology, but with the same kind of technological gains we’ve seen in recent years, albeit directed to private and not public gain:

auto and SUV engines have gotten much more efficient in the last two decades, it’s just that all the engineering improvements have gone into higher horsepower and more weight, not into MPG. From 1981 to 2003 [according to the EPA (pdf)], average horsepower of new vehicles rose 93 percent, average weight rose 24 percent, average zero-to-60 acceleration rose 29 percent, and mileage rose 1 percent.

And that improved acceleration, coupled with improved brakes, has just led to more aggressive driving: more speeding, more sudden stops and jackrabbit starts, more cutting off, more freeway tailgating at 100 mph. 0 to 60 in six seconds used to be reserved for Formula One. Today’s Toyota Camry does 0-60 in 5.8 seconds; a 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Cobra Jet 428 took 5.7, with a then-stunning 335 hp under the hood. What’s more, only 3,500 Cobra Jets were ever made; contrast that to the half-million Camrys sold in America every year. Meanwhile, the 2008 Porsche Cayenne Turbo has an astonishing 500 horses, moving its 5,000 pounds from 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds.

This horsepower explosion has serious implications for urban traffic design as well. The proliferation of stop signs throughout Chicago, for instance, is a half-assed attempt at traffic calming, to keep people from using their newfound automotive superpower to careen through neighborhoods at 50 mph — or to blatantly ignore crosswalks on arterials. Yet, all vehicles are expected to abide by the letter of these regulations, even if the traffic-calming spirit (or purpose) of the law is on their side.

The Model T had 20 horsepower; a bicyclist averages about 0.5. Is there any logic to the idea that these vehicles have the capacity, much less the obligation, to abide by the same rules that apply to vehicles ten or a hundred times more powerful, or with five or fifty times more mass and almost a thousand times more momentum?

From Derf this week, a tale of why exactly people stare at gonzo SUVs. And point. And laugh.

Bill Cottrell, 23, a Caltech physics graduate student originally from Concord, N.C., has been arrested on suspicion of destroying or damaging 125 SUVs at car dealerships northeast of Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of Chicago with degrees in physics and mathematics, where he also ran cross-country. (I wonder why I can’t remember anything about him.)

From the article: “Those who set fires, like those at the Hummer dealership in West Covina, are misguided zealots,” FBI Assistant Director Richard Garcia said in a statement. “The FBI respects, encourages and protects people who peacefully exercise their right to free speech. However, when extremists resort to arson attacks, which inevitably will lead to a loss of life, they have gone too far and the FBI will investigate aggressively and relentlessly to bring those who set such fires to justice.” As commentators at Portland Indymedia say, it’s equally extreme for General Motors to flood the nation’s roadways with vehicles that are, whether or not this intent is made public, designed to inflict maximum injury onto anyone/anything that happens to get in the way of one.

“Nationally, sales for the H2 fell 21 percent in February, Reuters reported, the sixth straight month of falling sales compared with the previous year.” Perhaps there is an outer limit to American’s appetite for avarice.

The article sadly leaves some assertions unchallenged:

Howard Drake, an owner of the Hummer dealership in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, said his sales were down in January and February, only because he did not have enough supply.

Every once in a while, he acknowledged, the culture wars seep onto the lots of the dealerships. Mr. Drake said he was approached by a well-known actress, whose name he declined to share.

“She told me she wanted to buy a hybrid, and she was concerned about the Hummer and its effect on the environment,” Mr. Drake recalled. “I asked where she lived. She said Beverly Hills. I said, ‘Out of curiosity: How big is your house?’

“She said: ‘What does that matter? It’s 20,000 square feet.’ ”

He said he replied: “I don’t know what’s less correct. Having three people live in a 20,000-square-foot house, with a pool and heaters and air-conditioners. Or me driving my Hummer 500 miles a month.”

Mr. Drake’s house, he said, is 3,000 square feet.

Giant SUVs are distasteful, dangerous, and deadly for scores of reasons beyond mere energy consumption (although this is not to condone wasteful energy use at home). For instance, the article obliquely mentions safety:

The environmental campaigner Laurie David, the wife of Larry David of the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm, worked herself into a lather not long ago over a Hummer-driving mother in the parking lot of the Crossroads School in Los Angeles. She rolled down her Prius window to share her displeasure. “I said,” Mrs. David recalled, ” ‘Are you crazy to bring this car into this parking lot? Do you understand how dangerous it is to the kids you can’t see?’ She stared at me blankly.”

[found at NYT]

Written today for the Bucktown Community Organization newsletter:

Sharing is Best

Your car demands a lot from you: $30 for a tank of gas, $300 a month for payments, $2,500 a year for insurance, $150 a year for stickers, potentially thousands if some tiny screw under the hood gets loose, and maybe $50 for a ticket, if that rare parking space turns out to be not so legal after all. And all this for something that’s used just an hour or two a day — if even that.

What if you could have the convenience and flexibility of having a car — without any of the random costs and hassles? Some Bucktown residents have been enjoying just that thanks to I-GO, a car-sharing service run by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a local nonprofit.

�We�re asking people to chose a smarter way to drive,� said Kathy Summers, I-GO’s vice president for marketing. �It�s like owning a car, only better.�

Organized car-sharing cooperatives began in Europe decades ago. Technological advances have made car sharing easier to use. Now, thousands of people in cities across the U.S. and Canada, including nearly 300 in Chicago, share cars. The car-sharing service takes care of insurance, maintenance, parking, and gas; members just drive.

I-GO members have 24-hour access to its growing fleet of cars, which are currently stationed in reserved parking spots in downtown, Edgewater, Hyde Park, Logan Square, and Wicker Park. Members use voice mail to reserve cars, then return the car to its parking spot when done. Members pay just $6 an hour, plus 50 cents per mile; an average member pays about $120 monthly. I-GO makes particularly good sense for people who drive for a few errands each month, or for families who have but rarely use a second car. For longer trips, I-GO members can get reduced rates on rental cars.

Car sharing isn’t just convenient and economical for users; it also helps the community and the environment. Each I-GO car serves about 15-20 members. Having one car on the roads, instead of 15, frees up almost an entire block of parking spots.

Since I-GO trips are priced by the hour and have to be reserved, members are likely to think a little before driving — reducing the total number of miles driven and encouraging walking, biking, or transit for short trips. Two dozen Seattle families cut their driving by over 1,200 miles a week after joining car-sharing, reducing local traffic congestion.

Cutting back on driving is the single biggest step most Americans can take to improve the environment. “I-GO helps improve our air quality by providing a way for Chicagoans to reduce the need for private vehicles,” says Marcia Jiminez, city environment commissioner. And when I-GO members do drive, it’s in an ultra-low-emissions Honda Civic.

Thanks to I-GO, Bucktown residents can easily help save the planet while saving money and headaches. The Wicker Park car, near North and Leavitt, is convenient for many Bucktown residents; I-GO will expand if there’s demonstrated interest elsewhere in the neighborhood. For more information about I-GO, visit www.I-GO-cars.org or call 773-278-4-I-GO.

A recent assessment of pedestrian crash data (reported by New Scientist and Transportation Alternatives) finds that large SUVs and vans are two to three times more likely to kill a pedestrian or cyclist upon impact than regular cars. Another paper estimates pedestrian fatality rates two to three times as high for light trucks as for cars.

Most of this increased risk is due to the vehicles’ bulk and high, aggressive front end designs (QT video and discussion — from a car reviewer, no less). The high, square front end hits higher on a pedestrian’s body, not only inflicting damage directly onto vital organs but also increasing the risk of a pedestrian going under, and therefore getting run over by, the car. Simply put, an SUV with bull bars is about the deadliest design possible for a car (short of arming the car).

The European Union and Australia have adopted safety tests and regulations to ensure that car designs aren’t unnecessarily deadly for pedestrians. Regulators in the U.S. estimate that simple changes in vehicle design — changes already in place on new Volvo and VW vehicles, for instance — could save at least 300 pedestrian lives every year. Yet, under the first Bush administration (updated link, #9), the NHTSA decided that pedestrians’ lives were expendable and not worth the effort. In the years since, thousands of pedestrians have died needlessly.

Meanwhile, the automakers’ recent voluntary initiative to improve SUV safety does nothing to protect pedestrians and cyclists. Blocker (Bradsher) bars prevent trucks from riding above cars by engaging the cars’ steel safety cages, but do nothing to prevent a pedestrian from going under; similarly, side curtain air bags should have been required safety equipment anyhow. Insofar as the Bush administration was marginally involved in raising the question, I suppose it’s a good thing.

From the New Scientist article: …The UK Department of Transport says new rules coming into force in Europe in October 2005 will force makers of “cars and car-derived vans” to meet strict new pedestrian protection standards. “They will have to use new materials to soften up some of the areas around the bonnet so they deform controllably in an impact,” says a DoT spokesperson…
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