Peak Car, Split Cities

Is this the end of the automobile-dominated era? Resilience reposted this On The Commons article, Way To Go!, by Jay Walljasper:

Americans made 10.7 billion trips on public transportation in 2013–the highest number since 1956 when the massive mobilization to build highways and push suburban development began.

These numbers represent a 37 percent transit increase since 1995. Meanwhile bike commuting is up 60 percent over the past decade, according to census figures. And people are walking 6 percent more than in 2005, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Significantly, the number of miles Americans travel in cars and trucks per capita has dropped nine percent since 2005.

Walljasper paints a rosy picture of the automobile-depleted future:

It’s good news for everybody because broader transportation choices are linked to a bounty of social and economic benefits, including expanded economic development, revitalized urban and suburban communities, increased social equity, reduced household transportation costs, improved public health, decreased traffic congestion, and improved environmental conditions.

But in, 3 Big Challenges for Planning Multi-Modal Cities, David King of CityLab sees more complexity:

As the cost of driving increases through higher gas prices, tolls, and parking charges, more people will look toward alternatives. Yet less driving does not necessarily mean more transit use. When people drive less they travel by all alternatives more; they also telecommute and use home deliveries. Greater use of alternative modes to driving adds bikes, pedestrians, trucks, transit, and taxis to already crowded streets. New thinking about the design and use of street space is needed as new modes, actors, technologies, and uses change the function of public roads.

And in, Atlanta Hopes a Three-Mile Streetcar Route Will Help Foster a New Urban Image, are two unusually frank quotes about whom this new mass transit is intended to serve:

“The streetcar just goes round and round,” said C. T. Martin, a member of the City Council. “At best, it’s a tourist attraction, but it doesn’t touch the bigger issue of regional transportation.”

“To all of those who may still have a slight doubt of the significance of the Atlanta streetcar, I say to you, frankly, ‘We did not build it for you,’ ” said A. J. Robinson, the president of Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District. “We are building it because Atlanta is in a global competition for attracting future human capital. This beginning step of streetcar infrastructure is a critical tool in that competition.”

The Atlanta Journal Constitution blogged, Trolling for millennials with the Atlanta Streetcar:

… if the streetcar system succeeds, we may someday look at the tail end of 2014 as the serious beginning of regional competition for the hearts and souls of Georgia’s millennial generation.

If A.J. Robinson is right, if a generation of Georgians less smitten with cars and home ownership is in fact on the rise, millennials could become the anchor babies behind the revival of downtown Atlanta as an economic and political force.

“Millennials are definitely coming into the city of Atlanta. The recent census data verifies that,” a very happy Mayor Kasim Reed said after the ribbon-cutting. “Our population numbers are moving in a very competitive direction with the suburbs for the first time in a long time.”

Eight Hundred Words feels present Atlanta residents are being slighted:

As I read this comment, the people who live in Atlanta are not  important. Those who do matter are the hypothetical out-of-town Millenial “knowledge workers” who might consider living here if the city can meet their desire for quaint urban trappings and the businesses who might someday employ them. It is hard not to feel dismissed by Mr. Robinson’s statements which hopefully do not reflect the priorities of the city.

In, Globalization and Atlanta’s Gated Urban Core, PSMag’s Jim Russell sees a future with Atlanta breaking along class lines:

Our cities are splitting into two: One for the privileged and one for the poor. … For the poor moving out to the suburbs, aspirationally or otherwise, public transit does not extend far enough away from the city center. The folklore typically used to explain this infrastructure oversight is that affluent whites wanted to keep the riffraff in town, away from the suburban idyll. [but now that is inverting] … In the city of Atlanta, transit is a luxury good used to attract and retain talent. The urban core is a gated community for one Atlanta, but not the other.

It seems clear that the urban tension over the Eric Garner choking has its roots in an effort to gentrify NYC streets through aggressive and racially-profiled policing. If cities are going to split along class lines, expect the police to be at the front lines of efforts to make the urban cores attractive and safe for the privileged. Expect the homeless and scary-looking people of color to be chased away or rounded up.