Has the concept of a tipping point become cliché? Perhaps.
One problem with the concept is the image of a “point.” Social, political, cultural, and economic realities are just never neat enough to fit the confines of a point. This metaphor, however, does seem useful to me as long as we understand that the point at which the balance tips is really a continuum of events and perceptions that unfold over time.
This morning I’m experiencing a tipping point:
1. Geoffrey Butler’s Voice of the Day column in the Springfield News-Leader (Bus System Hampered by City’s Sprawl) examines the state of the city’s public transportation and what individuals can do to make things better:
If we want a mass transit system to serve our city, we need to create an Urban Transportation Service with a more practical set of goals and objectives and a source of funding that is constant and does not rely on a totally separate urban service to fund.
We do need to change our attitudes on zoning and encourage the development of more walkable neighborhoods with more density and access to some sort of public transportation system.
We need to appreciate the public transportation we have provided for us, which is underwritten by everyone serviced by City Utilities, and do what we can to use the service whenever it does suit our needs.
We can and should get out of our cars and walk, bike or otherwise minimize the use of automobiles to get around. Move closer to your work, figure out the bus routes and build your activities around the routes that do exist or maybe just carpool.
Do something on an individual basis to reduce the traffic in our community, which also reduces the demand for energy, reduces pollution and makes our community better. If we have a lot of individual efforts, it can make a big difference.
2. In the Book Review section of The New York Times today is a review of Autophobia by Brian Ladd. From Tom Vanderbilt’s review:
Throughout the car’s life, Ladd argues, its critics have often “failed to appreciate the depth of the automobile’s hold on ordinary people,” reaching for conspiracies to help explain the ubiquity of car culture when the answers seem far simpler. The car, beyond any symbolic power, is usually the fastest — if far from the healthiest — way to get around. But this itself contains a point that the car’s boosters, Ladd argues, often ignore — a so-called path dependence. Once you started to make room for the car in the landscape — doing things that made the car “an easy, convenient, even necessary, but not always wise choice” — it
was hard to turn back.
3. Also from The New York Times in the Week in Review section: Three articles about the automobile industry and its problems, including:
What’s Good for G.M is Good for the Army, by Wesley Clark
Have You Driven a Bus or a Train Lately?, by Robert Goodman
How High Gas Prices Can Save the Car Industry, by Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon
4. Also in the Week in Review section:
How Industries Survive Change. If They Do. by Catherine Rampell
This week I’ll talk about what I think these columns mean for the future of active, personal transportation and public transportation in the United States.
Comments 8
Don’t forget The High Cost of Free Parking
Here’s a quote from The Magnificent Ambersons (1918!)
“I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles … With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization — that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls. I am not sure. But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess. But you can’t have the immense outward changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward changes in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles ‘had no business to be invented.’”
They just cut more bus routes in Orlando. A guy in my building had started taking the bus this summer and was saving over $100/month. They eliminated part of his route a few months go. He worked around it. Last week, they basically eliminated the rest of his route. We have a fully-funded commuter rail plan here (which will run on existing freight tracks), but the trial lawyers killed it in the legislature last spring.
I’m looking forward to reading more of your posts on this topic
Posted 16 Nov 2008 at 5:26 pm ¶Keri… Interesting quote. And thanks for the book suggestion!
Posted 16 Nov 2008 at 5:57 pm ¶I find it very hard to understand how people struggling to make ends meet and students can afford to drive cars. Just fuel, insurance and maintenance alone should be a cause of heart burn. The cities and states have tried to increase minimum wage among other initiatives to solve this problem. I dont see the problem even close to being solved.
I have mentioned earlier how the concept of quality of living is totally skewed in America. The only facilitators of quality seem to be cheap oil and credit…both monsters in their long term effects.
I haven spent the last week in Greenvill NC. It is a small little town with a small university and a ton of blue collar jobs. Yet, every one is in cars. The only cyclists are triathletes.
I am starting to read Tom Valderbits book. Your posts this following week should be interesting.
@keri
Posted 16 Nov 2008 at 9:19 pm ¶I am sorry to hear that the lawyers have killed the legislature. I was borrowing hope from Orlando’s commuter rail initiative for Jacksonville’s.
Shek, it’s not totally dead. The thought is it will get through next session. But the delay of a year was unwelcome. They still have to find a rail contractor, build stations, etc.
Traffic is fascinating. When I started reading it, I had to put it right back down and run to the store for a highlighter.
Posted 16 Nov 2008 at 11:06 pm ¶I was intrigued by Geoff’s comments above so I went out and read his entire piece to get the context. Knowing what I know about the background, what he says makes perfectly good sense to me. Disclaimer….what follows is strictly my view and not those of City Utilities.
Conceptual ideas have been discussed at a high level for a couple of years now about forming some sort of regional transit authority to overhaul and operate the current bus system. If that should ever occur, one of the facets of it would be bus routes from Springfield’s bedroom communities into town, and then expanded routes in town to more efficiently distribute those riders to where they need to go. The kicker is that funding is obviously going to be a major hurdle to be overcome, and I think I remember that there will need to be multiple elections to allow the restructure to occur.
Until that happens, CU will continue to run Springfield’s transit system. Unfortunately, there is a catch-22 that needs to be dealt with. First, ridership and the going rates ($1.10 for an adult fare) don’t even begin to cover existing operating expenses, let alone provide for any kind of an expansion of service. Secondly, running the minimalistic routes that are in place now makes the service unattractive to prospective riders who have any other option at all to get around town. Let’s face it, a three hour trip across town is not something that most of us will tolerate.
The point can be made that the transit service is basically being run as a public service for those individuals in Springfield who don’t have any other option for getting to the places they need to be.
On a more positive note, I did see three other bike commuters besides myself this morning, so some of us are still riding even though winter is approaching and gas prices have gone down!
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 11:05 am ¶A tipping point is when quantitative change becomes qualitative change. There will be a qualitative change when enough people realize that the auto and sprawl system exists only because it is heavily subsidized. Whereas since there are virtually no private operators left, in the U.S. public transit is not a subsidy, but an investment.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 12:37 pm ¶fpt… Nice blog. I’m adding you to the blogroll. And thanks for you comment.
Tracy… Yes, I’m also seeing more riders this year. And re: the bus Catch 22, I’m thinking effective public transportation will have to run as a tax-supported service and not a business.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 2:20 pm ¶Wow! That’s my only response to that piece. Individual action? Public Transit without a walkable city? Wow! Seriously?
Posted 20 Nov 2008 at 10:45 am ¶