Sustainable Transportation at UCSC Summer Sustainability Lecture Series

More town cyclists than academics attended the final lecture in the 2009 UCSC summer sustainability lecture series on August 25, Sustainable Transportation (Elizabeth Deakin, City & Regional Planning and Urban Design, UC-Berkeley)  [although academics can certainly also be cyclists]

All of the lectures in the series have been excellent, but Ms. Deakin was unusually pragmatic, down-to-earth and filled the lecture with clear examples of how to combine land use with transportation, from her work in Latin America, US (California, Houston) and now China.  Clearly an expert, with  a breadth of topics ranging from GHG, high speed rail, tax models to design of spaces which encourage mass transit use.

One of her main points is to focus on the first and last mile when planning for mass transit use.   By this she means the mile or so getting from home and the final mile to the office.   If the path from home to transit doesn't cross any large arteries, desolate strips, and people find it inviting to walk or bicycle to transit, then they do so. But add ugly overpasses, wide treeless streets, pedestrian unfriendly sections and  people will opt to take the car the first mile and, once in the car, go all the way to work.  And - crucial -  if transit is 'almost' close to downtown, that's not good enough.

So she considers land use - its design, aesthetic appeal, walkablilty, etc. - as tightly tied to transit, something that makes immediate sense but I never fully connected the dots.  Not too many people like to walk on the nicest sidewalk if it has a  high wall on one side and busy traffic on the other.

Ms. Deakin also stressed the need to work with cities early in the planning.   If city policy is to encourage turning green fields at the end of the line into box stores, then don't expect downtown to thrive.  If you want a vibrant downtown with high transit use be sure to infill downtown, have the right density, and avoid have gaps and 'missing' teeth, all of which may cost more than using green fields..  She showed examples from Fresno (gaps) and the Central Valley cities (she showed the welcoming effects of putting trees in the center of street too wide).  San Jose is a city with too much sprawl to make transit work.

She endorsed California high speed rail but is concerned again that "almost" downtown is not good enough.   The stations and related development, that first/last mile, just all work together.

I paid a lot of attention to her work in Jinan, China.

Blocks in China are very large, perhaps because of ancient circuitous paths and neighborhoods that eventually were fitted into city grids or because the former state-owned enterprises were cities themselves, with schools, housing, daycare (yes) hospitals and the factory all occupying a  large, contiguous plot.  That was good for planners, but modern China is rapidly becoming a commuter centered, with poorer workers being pushed out of downtown and needing to travel to get to work.   With streets built long before cars, there is little parking and (terrible!) now the sidewalk is used.   And, as vehicle traffic increases, ugly overpasses are being built and bicycles are being pushed off the streets.   (I recall a college student in Fuzhou, a city of several million, explain a game she and her used to play when she was little (only 15 years ago?) and rode on the back of his of bike.   There was so few cars you could here it coming long before it arrived.  They had time to discuss if it was a car or truck or bus.   Not today!)

Ms. Deakin's examples, insights and clarity make an extremely valuable resource.  I'll have to ask more about China and she what she's written.