TRANSPORTATION/ URBAN ISSUES PLATFORM
A Return to Civic Responsibility and Civic Pride
This American generation must achieve a major reconfiguration of the American landscape. This is a necessity for environmental, social, economic and spiritual reasons. It is also essential to our national security.
America accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population but uses 24 percent of the petroleum consumed every year. This unsupportable addiction has left us dependent on massive petroleum importation from volatile regions. It has drawn us into regional conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and South America. Often the U.S. has been unable to confront dictatorial, human-rights-violating, and terrorist-finacing regimes because we need them to keep the oil flowing, even as they shovel protection money to the terrorists who seek to do us harm.
This massive outflow of American income to foreign nations has also amounted to a regressive tax on our economy. Poor people suffer the most when gasoline prices rise, and economic activity is slowed. Finally, and most importantly, our massive annual carbon emissions contribute to global warming and atmospheric pollution that threatens to flood our cities and devastate our farms with the effects of global climate change.
The suburban lifestyle that this profligate use of oil allows is also detrimental to our social, environmental and spiritual well-being. Low-density development gobbles up valuable land. So natural land is deforested, swamps are drained and deserts are paved. The result is physical and environmental deprivation: American farmers are forced off their land by rising property values, threatening the continued existence of American rural and small-town lifestyles, endangered species deprived of their habitats, and future generations deprived of the natural beauty and biodiversity that is one of our greatest national assets.
Furthermore, the conformity, segregation and loss of a public sphere had a deleterious effect on American social life and democracy. The physical layout of the suburbs eliminates an important public sphere: sidewalks. In so doing it inhibits the creative energy that infuses urban culture, often leading residents of American suburbs to feel spiritually and culturally bereft. Further the lifestyle of driving everywhere and never walking has spawned an epidemic of obesity whose health, economic and social costs we are only beginning to measure. There is no reason for us to continue subsidizing this environmentally unsustainable lifestyle.
The American addiction to gasoline is not a matter of choice. It is the product of government policies that have forced the population to live and travel in low-density neighborhoods, even though millions suffer depression and withdraw from society (see Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”) as a result. The outcome has been to tear our cities apart under massive highway construction, to segregate our society along socio-economic and racial line and to devour our national landscape for construction and oil drilling. We oppose drilling in ANWR. But we recognize that we cannot do so in a vacuum. We must also seek to change the underlying circumstances that have created our oil dependence in the first place.
To reconstruct our landscape in a manner that will be economically and environmentally sustainable does not require innovative solutions. It merely requires undoing the damaging governmental policies of the last fifty years and reversing them. Those policies include but are not limited to: our massive subsidy of auto travel through the federal highway program, local zoning codes that require a minimum amount of parking for homes and businesses, setbacks from the street and segregation of uses, our disinvestments in mass transit, our failure to raise fuel efficiency standards to keep pace with improving technology, our failure to raise gasoline taxes to an appropriate level, the federal government’s policy of federally insuring home buying loans but not loans for renovating old homes, thus encouraging people to buy newly constructed homes in even farther flung suburbs rather than higher quality more socially valuable and ecologically efficient urban homes in need of renovation, the federal tax policy that makes mortgage interest payments tax deductible but not rent, thus favoring home owners (suburbanites) over apartment dwellers (urbanites).
We oppose all of President Bush’s proposals to make these problems worse, including his proposal to revoke the status of state and local taxes as exempt from federal income tax as that will create yet another incentive for people to move from the cities to the suburbs because cities tend to have higher income taxes.
We also advocate the following alternatives:
An immediate and permanent decrease in federal and state highway subsidies, to be replaced with a public-private initiative to return privately-operated high-speed passenger rail to the American landscape. This framework will copy what has been instituted with the Airline Industry. AMTRAK will be relieved of operating passenger trains, and only remain to maintain track and the stations. That will be the federal investment in the system. Private companies practicing free market competition will conduct actual rail service, but with regulations to ensure that coach-class tickets remain affordable and adequate service will be provided to corridors that might be less profitable. With AMTRAK relieved of the burdens of rail operation, it will do a much better job of maintaining and straightening track that is necessary for high-speed rail, and probably save government money in the process. This will bring a great boon to the American manufacturing sector, revitalize older urban cores, reduce traffic, and increase inter-city travel efficiency, making inter-city travel possible at speeds of 180 miles per hour instead of the 60 mph that highway travel is constrained by. It will also reduce fuel dependency and make the nation less vulnerable to the after-effects of another airplane-based terrorist attack. A program like this will especially serve as a revitalization strategy for the older industrial cities of the Great Lakes, and the midwestern agricultural towns that have been in a decline parallel with that of American passenger rail.
An immediate increase in federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars to 40 miles per gallon.
Immediately closing the loophole that allows SUVs to be classified as light trucks instead of cars; from now on they should have to meet the same fuel efficiency standards as cars.
A revision of the tax code, making money spent on renovating pre 1945 dwellings tax-deductible for individuals and businesses and creating a new federal program to guarantee loans to renovate older homes.
Creating federal guidelines for large tax-deductions, to be implemented on the state and local level, by following a loose framework of new zoning codes for every community. These would be in accordance with the principles of new urbanism, chiefly: mixed income housing, mixed use housing (commercial and residential together), all streets must have ample sidewalks, street-side parking, and follow a logical, efficient grid whenever possible, buildings must be built out to the property line or close to it, buildings must be close together, parking garages will not be allowed, or will only be allowed behind houses rather than in front of them, business districts will not have surface parking lots, rather, they will have constructed or underground garages; businesses and residential developments shall not be required to have a minimum number of parking spaces, but they will be allowed no more than a certain maximum number; streets will have strict maximum widths, in accordance with the height of the buildings that line them, of no more than 1:1. Also where possible: bike lanes shall be created, sidewalks shall be lined with trees, and wherever possible highways remodeled in the style of a Parisian boulevard (exterior buffers and lanes added).
We also advocate a federal grant program to plant trees on sidewalks in depressed urban areas.
We also advocate a program where the federal government will pay the entire cost if a city or state government decides to replace a highway or portion of a highway with commuter or light rail.
We call on state governments to create regional governments so that suburbs can no longer continue to plunder the wealth of cities while starving urban school districts and other needs. Rather, entire metropolitan regions should be governed together, even when they cross state boundaries. These new regional governments will have integrated school systems, so that children in the suburbs and cities will get an equal education. In addition to the obvious benefits, this will have the added effect of reducing the incentive for families to move to the suburbs.
We recognize that this will not be an entirely easy sale politically. What we hope is that the Democratic Party will find politicians brave enough to tell the American people that they must make some changes in the way they live for the good of the country and the planet.
by Ben Adler and Rich Boatti
This American generation must achieve a major reconfiguration of the American landscape. This is a necessity for environmental, social, economic and spiritual reasons. It is also essential to our national security.
America accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population but uses 24 percent of the petroleum consumed every year. This unsupportable addiction has left us dependent on massive petroleum importation from volatile regions. It has drawn us into regional conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and South America. Often the U.S. has been unable to confront dictatorial, human-rights-violating, and terrorist-finacing regimes because we need them to keep the oil flowing, even as they shovel protection money to the terrorists who seek to do us harm.
This massive outflow of American income to foreign nations has also amounted to a regressive tax on our economy. Poor people suffer the most when gasoline prices rise, and economic activity is slowed. Finally, and most importantly, our massive annual carbon emissions contribute to global warming and atmospheric pollution that threatens to flood our cities and devastate our farms with the effects of global climate change.
The suburban lifestyle that this profligate use of oil allows is also detrimental to our social, environmental and spiritual well-being. Low-density development gobbles up valuable land. So natural land is deforested, swamps are drained and deserts are paved. The result is physical and environmental deprivation: American farmers are forced off their land by rising property values, threatening the continued existence of American rural and small-town lifestyles, endangered species deprived of their habitats, and future generations deprived of the natural beauty and biodiversity that is one of our greatest national assets.
Furthermore, the conformity, segregation and loss of a public sphere had a deleterious effect on American social life and democracy. The physical layout of the suburbs eliminates an important public sphere: sidewalks. In so doing it inhibits the creative energy that infuses urban culture, often leading residents of American suburbs to feel spiritually and culturally bereft. Further the lifestyle of driving everywhere and never walking has spawned an epidemic of obesity whose health, economic and social costs we are only beginning to measure. There is no reason for us to continue subsidizing this environmentally unsustainable lifestyle.
The American addiction to gasoline is not a matter of choice. It is the product of government policies that have forced the population to live and travel in low-density neighborhoods, even though millions suffer depression and withdraw from society (see Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”) as a result. The outcome has been to tear our cities apart under massive highway construction, to segregate our society along socio-economic and racial line and to devour our national landscape for construction and oil drilling. We oppose drilling in ANWR. But we recognize that we cannot do so in a vacuum. We must also seek to change the underlying circumstances that have created our oil dependence in the first place.
To reconstruct our landscape in a manner that will be economically and environmentally sustainable does not require innovative solutions. It merely requires undoing the damaging governmental policies of the last fifty years and reversing them. Those policies include but are not limited to: our massive subsidy of auto travel through the federal highway program, local zoning codes that require a minimum amount of parking for homes and businesses, setbacks from the street and segregation of uses, our disinvestments in mass transit, our failure to raise fuel efficiency standards to keep pace with improving technology, our failure to raise gasoline taxes to an appropriate level, the federal government’s policy of federally insuring home buying loans but not loans for renovating old homes, thus encouraging people to buy newly constructed homes in even farther flung suburbs rather than higher quality more socially valuable and ecologically efficient urban homes in need of renovation, the federal tax policy that makes mortgage interest payments tax deductible but not rent, thus favoring home owners (suburbanites) over apartment dwellers (urbanites).
We oppose all of President Bush’s proposals to make these problems worse, including his proposal to revoke the status of state and local taxes as exempt from federal income tax as that will create yet another incentive for people to move from the cities to the suburbs because cities tend to have higher income taxes.
We also advocate the following alternatives:
An immediate and permanent decrease in federal and state highway subsidies, to be replaced with a public-private initiative to return privately-operated high-speed passenger rail to the American landscape. This framework will copy what has been instituted with the Airline Industry. AMTRAK will be relieved of operating passenger trains, and only remain to maintain track and the stations. That will be the federal investment in the system. Private companies practicing free market competition will conduct actual rail service, but with regulations to ensure that coach-class tickets remain affordable and adequate service will be provided to corridors that might be less profitable. With AMTRAK relieved of the burdens of rail operation, it will do a much better job of maintaining and straightening track that is necessary for high-speed rail, and probably save government money in the process. This will bring a great boon to the American manufacturing sector, revitalize older urban cores, reduce traffic, and increase inter-city travel efficiency, making inter-city travel possible at speeds of 180 miles per hour instead of the 60 mph that highway travel is constrained by. It will also reduce fuel dependency and make the nation less vulnerable to the after-effects of another airplane-based terrorist attack. A program like this will especially serve as a revitalization strategy for the older industrial cities of the Great Lakes, and the midwestern agricultural towns that have been in a decline parallel with that of American passenger rail.
An immediate increase in federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars to 40 miles per gallon.
Immediately closing the loophole that allows SUVs to be classified as light trucks instead of cars; from now on they should have to meet the same fuel efficiency standards as cars.
A revision of the tax code, making money spent on renovating pre 1945 dwellings tax-deductible for individuals and businesses and creating a new federal program to guarantee loans to renovate older homes.
Creating federal guidelines for large tax-deductions, to be implemented on the state and local level, by following a loose framework of new zoning codes for every community. These would be in accordance with the principles of new urbanism, chiefly: mixed income housing, mixed use housing (commercial and residential together), all streets must have ample sidewalks, street-side parking, and follow a logical, efficient grid whenever possible, buildings must be built out to the property line or close to it, buildings must be close together, parking garages will not be allowed, or will only be allowed behind houses rather than in front of them, business districts will not have surface parking lots, rather, they will have constructed or underground garages; businesses and residential developments shall not be required to have a minimum number of parking spaces, but they will be allowed no more than a certain maximum number; streets will have strict maximum widths, in accordance with the height of the buildings that line them, of no more than 1:1. Also where possible: bike lanes shall be created, sidewalks shall be lined with trees, and wherever possible highways remodeled in the style of a Parisian boulevard (exterior buffers and lanes added).
We also advocate a federal grant program to plant trees on sidewalks in depressed urban areas.
We also advocate a program where the federal government will pay the entire cost if a city or state government decides to replace a highway or portion of a highway with commuter or light rail.
We call on state governments to create regional governments so that suburbs can no longer continue to plunder the wealth of cities while starving urban school districts and other needs. Rather, entire metropolitan regions should be governed together, even when they cross state boundaries. These new regional governments will have integrated school systems, so that children in the suburbs and cities will get an equal education. In addition to the obvious benefits, this will have the added effect of reducing the incentive for families to move to the suburbs.
We recognize that this will not be an entirely easy sale politically. What we hope is that the Democratic Party will find politicians brave enough to tell the American people that they must make some changes in the way they live for the good of the country and the planet.
by Ben Adler and Rich Boatti
posted by Rich at 3:04 PM
1 Comments:
Hey All,
Just some stats I got off of APTA.com (American Public Transportation Association):
Every dollar taxpayers invest in public transportation generates up to $6 in economic returns, which translates into higher revenues for cities and states.
Businesses realize a gain in sales three times the public sector investment in transit capital. A study by Cambridge Systematics estimates that each $10 million in capital investment yields $30 million in increased sales, while each $10 million in operating investment yields $32 million more in sales.
Businesses also benefit from transit operations spending, with a $32 million increase in business sales for each $10 million in transit operations spending.
The additional economic benefits from transit investment in major metropolitan areas are substantial. For every $10 million invested, over $15 million is saved in transportation costs to both highway and transit users. These costs include operating costs, fuel costs, and congestion costs.
Business output and personal income are positively impacted by transit investment, growing rapidly over time. Public transportation creates savings to business operations and increases the overall efficiency of the economy, positively affecting business sales and household incomes. A sustained program of transit capital investment will generate an increase of $2 million in business output and $0.8 million in personal income for each $10 million in the short run (during year one). In the long term (during year 20), these benefits increase to $31 million and $18 million for business output and personal income respectively.
Transit capital and operating investment generates personal income and business profits that produce positive fiscal impacts. On average, a typical state/local government could realize a 4 to 16 percent gain in revenues due to the increases in income and employment generated by investments in transit.
Using transit saves communities and businesses money. In cities that have large rail systems, residents and businesses see a total road and parking savings of $20 billion annually as a result of 6.1 million vehicles not being on the roads or in parking garages that don't need to be built.
Business leaders see the benefits of public transportation. Almost half of the nation's Fortune 500 companies, representing over $2 trillion in annual revenue, are headquartered in America's transit-intensive metropolitan areas.
"Public transportation doesn't just move people; it moves the economy," said APTA President William W. Millar. "We must continue to invest in transit so that we can continue to provide jobs and economic opportunities."
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