In the year 2030...
The Transition model asks us to envision what various aspects of our community life will be like in the future. So the TA transportation action group invites anyone to join the discussion around that question. Looking to the year 2030, how do you see our transportation needs being met, or not met? The vision we work toward will inform what steps we need to begin taking in the near future. What do you see?
Comments
Transportation 2030, hmm . . .
Well, as a car-free person, I suppose I can give my two cents:
First and foremost, I hope there will be less of a need for transportation in general, as I'd like to think that increases in fuel costs will create more of a demand for everyday services to become more localised. I envision where I live in West Asheville for example, to have it's own tailgate market (much bigger than the current one), grocery store (maybe Ingles will localize? probably not), hardware store (used to be one here), nursery/garden supply shop, and bookstore. That way almost everyone living here could walk to the sources of their everyday needs. Of course, this may be beyond the scope of this discussion, so I'll move on.
Next, the city will need to drastically up the game in terms of public transit. I'm glad to see the hybrid buses, but the transit system as it currently functions is only used by those with absolutely no other choice. I can often walk to where I'm going (even across town) faster than the bus would get me there. I see a bus system with more routes providing access to more areas, departing and arriving with greater frequency. The buses might even be smaller, as described in Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language", where he suggests minibuses going along many different routes, all connected via computer so that each one knows where the others have picked up passengers and knows what stops have passengers waiting. It doesn't sound too far fetched to me, if we're talking about the year 2030.
Of course, bicycle transportation will become much more popular, and as a result I envision driver awareness will increase accordingly. However, we definitely have our share of challenges regarding bike transportation in Asheville. Most of our roads are small and winding, and many of them have little potential for accomodating bike lanes. Also, the terrain is hilly, and cycling is too strenuous for many who live here. However, cycling is typically the most convenient way for city dwellers to get around (faster than cars in many big cities), and we already have a larger-than-average population of cyclists here. Therefore, bicycles will probably be a popular option for those able-bodied (especially when there are fewer cars on the road), and those with physical challenges will walk or ride the bus (but taxis will probably be unaffordable for most).
Finally, walking. Ah walking. I usually choose to walk rather than ride a bike or bus. As human beings we are physiologically designed to spend a good portion of our day moving forward, on foot. Walking. Walking is excersize of the least strenuous kind, with little risk of injury or overexertion. Walking remind us to slow down and take in everything we pass. I've had many of the best conversations of my life while on a stroll, so I won't hesitate to suggest that it stimulates the mind as well. It even allows us time to stop and chat with neighbors as we pass, or friends we bump into along the way. If I have it my way, we'll all be able to walk to most of the places we frequent in 2030, and have time to stop and smell the roses along the way!
Transportation 2030... Gasoline Rationing by then?
So, I'm wondering about the possibility/probability of gasoline rationing as petroleum supplies no longer keep up with demand. Prices have been held artificially low via subsidies to oil companies, but now many folks are jumping on the bandwagon to end subsidies. Prices jump up in that case. Demand goes down, but only in the US and only for discretionaty travel. And with reduced supply, the national priorities with be on keeping the military supplied with fuel and on agricultural production. Travel? Got to come up with reduced levels of gas consumption. Car pooling, pooling ration coupons, biking, walking, etc, to save some forms of mobility.
Housing price collapse, too
In addition to these things, I think that housing prices in outlying areas will collapse-- it will be harder to get to them. A farm in Leicesetr makes sense, buy maybe not a suburban tract home.
It would be good if we could come up with "progressive" rationing, via coupons, as opposed to "regressive" rationing [rich drive, poor do as they can].
Housing price collapse, too
In addition to these things, I think that housing prices in outlying areas will collapse-- it will be harder to get to them. A farm in Leicesetr makes sense, buy maybe not a suburban tract home.
It would be good if we could come up with "progressive" rationing, via coupons, as opposed to "regressive" rationing [rich drive, poor do as they can].
Orson Scott Card's take on future transportation
Card On Future Transportation
In best-selling sci-fi and fantasy writer Orson Scott Card’s novel, Hidden Empire (2009), at the beginning of each chapter, the author shares personal reflections and visions about American life. The following statement comes at chapter four and speaks of the end of cheap oil and how our methods of transportation need to change. I hope a lot of people hear his message.
“It’s not about ending our dependence on ‘foreign’ oil. It’s about having some oil left in the world to do the things that only oil can do.
We can turn anything into electricity – sunlight, tides, rivers, coal, shale, corn, wind, garbage, the het of the Earth. We will never run out of electricity. So every vehicle that can run on electricity, must.
Because there will never be a battery-powered airplane, sofar as we can foresee. Nor will we have electric rockets any time soon. Even after all the oil that we’ve burned in the past century, we still have enough oil left to keep all our planes in the air and put new satellites in the sky for thousands and thousands of years.
When President Eisenhower started the interstate freeway system, it was one of the great works of civilization. Now it’s time to put our money into something else, to bet our future on something else.
I’m asking Congress to abolish, but the year 2015, the transport across state lines of vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine, except hybrids, which will have until 2020.
We are funding the development of lighter, longer-lasting, and faster-charging batteries.
We are providing tax incentives for service stations to provide quick-charge outlets in addition to, and eventually instead of, gas pumps.
Above all, we are embarking on a new national electric railway system. Passenger and freight service will once again reach into every city of more than twenty-five thousand people, and electric streetcars will be built for urban transport in all those cities.
On a corporate level, we are separating the trains from the track, just as airlines share the air routes, so also the train companies will share the new double and quadruple tracks, express and local, urban and intercity. They will compete to offer you better and better service. Comfortable seating, plenty of luggage room, continuous cellphone and broadband internet service. Onboard food and shops from pop0ular franchises.
The federal government will do for trains what it has done for airlines – we will maintain a Rail Traffic Administration that, using computers and highly trained operatives, will control the safe flow of rail traffic throughout America, without collisions or delays.
These trains will go where you need them to go, they will operate on schedules that suit your needs, and within a few years you will wonder why you ever wasted time driving yourself, hour after hour, across the country or around town, then searching for a parking place.
I will not be president when the whole system is complete – neither was Eisenhower when the interstate highway system finally reached every important destination. But within the next six months, you will be reading and watching videos about Railway One, the presidential train, the rolling White House, which I will use instead of an airplane for all my travel within the lower forty-eight states.
I will still fly to Alaska and Hawaii.”
30 Year Plan by the State
The state of NC is developing a 30-year transportation plan and asking for citizen input via a brief online survey. The website address is http://www.ncdot.gov/performance/reform . A good way for us to add our few cents worth to their thinking, maybe even let the planners know that Peak Oil should be factored into their planning. Thanks, Jim Barton, for bringing it to our attention.