Well, I’ve discovered the cure for that. It’s called The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. Warning: Do not drink alcohol while reading this book.

Also on my reading list this summer was Richard Florida’s The Great Reset. The differences between these two books are much like the differences between problems and opportunities or between the glass being half full or broken on the floor — the liquid rapidly spreading in a sticky mess that fouls the kitchen, invites pests, and ruins your morning.

The Great Reset is about periods of upheaval “when new technologies and technological systems arise, when the economy is recast and society remade, and when the places where we live and work change to suit new needs.” It is essentially an optimistic book meant as something of a practical guide for understanding our epoch and how to thrive as things change.

The Long Emergency is about the same things only the upheaval is a downward spiral into civilization destroying deprivation caused by the end of cheap energy, i.e. oil.

Hmmmmmm…

One thing seems clear to me: We’re all going to be leading more local lives in the near future. Whether this is good or bad depends, in the short term, entirely upon our individual perceptions of what it means to downsize. For example, I am completely jazzed about my family’s active program of downsizing that will lead in the near future to a smaller home (perhaps in a multi-family building) in a denser urban environment. I know a lot of people for whom that sounds like Hell.

And the price of gas? I have no idea what it is right now.

Technorati Tags: sustainability

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

This is what happens when you design roads for cars instead of people.

Also see the discussion at Commute Orlando.

Technorati Tags: car culture, pedestrian safety, walking

For example, consider this joke:

Q: What’s a redneck’s last words?

A: “Watch this!”

And, obviously, we imagine something having to do with large amounts of beer, pickup trucks, and stunts — perhaps involving deep ditches or steep hills.

In order for the joke to be funny, people of the sort we call rednecks must make certain choices we might call irrational (and associate with rednecks) that lead to certain outcomes that we might find hysterically funny but not what the redneck intended. One merely has to spend a few minutes on this web site to be cured of the idea that rational choice is a smoothly-operating human behavior.

For example:

OK, it’s time to get at the point of this post which is to highlight this article from InTransition magazine: Travelers Behaving Badly: Behavioral Economics Offers Insights and Strategies for Improving Transportation. The upshot: People make all kinds of awful decisions while driving, and these awful decision are predictable. So much for the “rational” (conventional understanding) in rational choice.

This part is scary:

One set of experiments finds that we are irrationally optimistic about our abilities in many situations. Asked to predict their grades in a class at the beginning of the semester, students invariably overrate their performance, with the class skewed towards high achievers. Similarly most drivers in repeated studies rate their skills as better than average (sometimes referred to as the “Lake Woebegone Effect,” after radio personality Garrison Keillor’s fictional hometown “where all the children are above average”).

This can plausibly account for much of the risky and boneheaded behavior on roadways—for instance driving while talking on a cell phone. Drivers think they can beat the odds.  They feel, “It’s the other person’s behavior that needs to be controlled, not mine,” Tom Vanderbilt noted in his bestselling book Traffic.

The article talks about the concept of “nudges” as a way to alter behavior. This photo of traffic decals is a good example of a nudge that works on the level of “automatic behavior.” The 3-D representation sure looks like these things are popping out of the road. I would slow down.

This is fascinating:

The approach is called “libertarian paternalism”—using nudges to guide people to make better choices, while still leaving them free to decide on their own, even to make bad choices. Balz said “one of the key pieces is retaining the libertarian side”—that is, providing “an easy option for someone to go another route” if they want.

Heaven forbid the nanny state should tell us how to drive and properly penalize us when we don’t. Our freedom (irresponsibly understood and practiced) is easily worth 40,000 lives per year, baby!

Technorati Tags: crazy drivers, cycling, traffic design, transportation

With the news that the government has failed to produce an energy/climate bill, it appears we the people are on our own once again. If we are to break our addiction to oil and mitigate the damage we are doing to our environment, then as individuals and families we are going to have to make the kinds of choices that may help us prosper as oil runs out and the earth’s climate changes.

Once again, the bicycle is a wondrous invention that can help.

(Actually, the whole “on our own” thing doesn’t really work. In a democratic republic such as ours, the government is us. We don’t have a climate/energy bill in large part because we failed to demand it.)

It is clear to me, even without hard data, that more people in Springfield are riding bicycles for all kinds of reasons. My hope is that new riders come to learn these things quickly:

1. Springfield’s urban core is a great place to ride a bicycle.
2. Riding a bicycle is safe, fun, convenient, healthy, and economical .
3. Using a bicycle as basic transportation here is very easy if one is not stuck in some hell-and-gone, car-centric, sprawling suburb.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle culture, bicycle politics, cycling, green transportation, sustainability

Waaaaaaaa?

But then I read this essay by Keri Caffrey, of Commute Orlando, and it began to make a bit of sense:

The root cause of the problems for bicycling in the U.S. is the oppressive belief system about who the roads are for. We have car-culture amnesia about our public road system and who is entitled to use it. Enforcers of the culture of speed have used intimidation and fearmongering to subjugate the drivers of human-powered vehicles. The result is that most bicyclists ride in ways that increase their risk, leading to a spiral of increasing fear…

Be sure to read her description of the spiral of fear.

Two things to consider:

1. Cars pass bicyclists closer on roads with bicycle lanes.
2. Bicycle lanes and tracks play a role in increasing bicycle crashes.

I’d never had much experience with bicycle lanes before moving to Springfield.  My first experience with them was fine it seemed. But I became unsettled, which led to this examination of our local system.

Since that time I’ve had the opportunity to ride on lanes and tracks in other places — mostly in Florida — and at least observe lanes in many other places. My view of bicycle lanes has become ever dimmer largely because I’ve become ever more analytical about my riding experience and the behaviors of other road users. Plus I have a healthy respect for my own safety on the road.

I do not feel safe in a bicycle lane because, in fact, I am not as safe as being an integrated part of traffic.

I think our Springfield plan is a much better way to go. The CIP money will be paying for route signs — a numbering system similar to the interstate highways —  on the current bicycle route system. And sharrows will be painted on the system, which will clearly indicate to all road users that bicyclists are a normal part of traffic.

Next, the city is starting work on The Link – a connector system of traffic-calmed roads that will connect current and future greenways. Our greenways represent an excellent form of bicycle infrastructure something like what we’ve seen in the compelling videos of David Hembrow (although we still have much to learn from the Dutch example).

I believe these projects represent real progress for bicyclists in Springfield and will serve as an example for other communities in the United States.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle culture, bicycle infrastructure, bicycle politics, bicycle safety, bicycle trails, cycling, traffic design, Transportation Planning, Urban Planning