Transit Agencies are increasingly investing in Marketing to boost ridership. Climate change is sometimes a focus.

The automobile industry spent about $21 billion on advertising in 2007, according to DM News. Clearly they would not spend this kind of money to convince us all that we can’t live without a car unless it actually worked.  If public transit agencies want to increase their “customer base,” why are they not advertising too?  Apparently, some are.

Los Angeles’ Metro is marketing its products and services much like the auto industry with the end goal of reducing traffic, cleaning the air and reducing commute times. The streets of LA sport buses of bright colors and a number of playful ads on billboards encouraging Angelinos to take the bus, rail or carpool.  Matt Raymond, the Chief Communications Officer for Metro and the creator of LA Metro’s marketing push, said the marketing team aimed to make public transportation cool.

The ads and the re-branding of Metro seem to be having success.  The recent passing of Measure R – a 1/2 cent sales tax that is expected to generate 40 billion dollars over the next 30 years for improving transit services in LA – required a 2/3 vote and showed that the vast majority of Angelinos, most of whom commute by private car, are willing to pay for transit out of their own pockets.  Metro’s marketing is also finding success in convincing people to start using its services, with the percentage of discretionary riders (those people who have the choice to commute by car or transit) rising from 24% to 36%.

Smaller transit agencies have tried similar measures.  In 2008, the Bay Area Air Quality District gave grants to transit agencies around the San Francisco Bay Area for marketing to help promote walking, biking, and taking transit.  For Petaluma Transit, it worked.  Ridership increased 20% during the campaign.  Petaluma’s marketing campaign also included connecting driving with global warming by asking people to, “Cool the Planet One Ride at a Time.”

While current budget crunches may mean less money for transit operations, as funds recover, it will be imperative to support expanded transit services with marketing.  Such advertising can help create a culture shift away from the use of personal cars and towards more sustainable lifestyles.  It may be obvious to transit agencies that driving causes traffic, pollution, and climate change, but the average person still needs a reminder and a convenient alternative if they are going to ditch their car for good.

Richard Register of Ecocity Builders has created a rendering of the de-urbanization of now sprawling Denver, CO. TDR could help achieve this end with the benefit of reducing vehicle miles traveled and thus, carbon emissions and restoring needed farmland.

When local governments want to encourage density and prevent or undo suburban sprawl, one of their most powerful tools for doing so may be transfer of development rights (TDR) programs. The loss of farmland to suburban development and the subsequent loss of forest to farmland is a big piece of the climate change problem. TDR programs have the potential to become a major part of the solution both by increasing density and thus, decreasing vehicle miles traveled per person, and by preventing said deforestation.

How TDRs work
At first, a region may be completely devoted to agriculture. However, over time, as a region’s farms face development pressure from a growing urban area, pressure to develop makes preserving such farmlands economically inferior to developing the land. When left to traditional zoning, market pressure often causes low-density development, aka suburban sprawl.

At this point, regional government leaders can decide to preserve their agricultural spaces. Under traditional zoning the only option would be to tell some farmers that they cannot sell their land for development. Instead the government can institute a TDR program. Farmers in a less dense corner of the county can sell their development rights to builders in an area designated for more density.

Benefits
TDR programs are very useful because they offer landowners a way to recapture some lost economic value when a property is down-zoned from residential use to agricultural use for preservation purposes. TDR programs do not replace zoning, but a well-constructed TDR program reduces the demand for zoning variances, since developers will use the market to secure additional development rights.

TDRs also offer a way to fund development that is beneficial to an entire region using free market forces. As regions begin to address their greenhouse gas emissions, TDRs can play a vital role in increasing density and decreasing per capita emissions from vehicle miles traveled in a region. Moreover, developers benefit from the certainty that TDR programs offer around zoning laws. Instead of incurring the costs and risks of negotiating for variances, developers can exceed certain zoning regulations simply by purchasing development rights from other property owners.

While zoning rules can change over time and with new administrations, TDR programs discontinue development rights forever so that public values such as open space and historic buildings can be restored and permanently protected.

The Process
While TDR programs hold a lot of promise for reducing the farmland lost to suburban development each year (and the subsequent loss of forest to create more farmland), TDR programs only work in conjunction with strong zoning ordinances and good comprehensive planning. Building political consensus on zoning issues is always a challenge, but vitally important.

The Challenges
Successful TDR programs start with strong comprehensive plans. TDR programs may be more complicated and expensive to implement than traditional zoning, as local governments must oversee deed restrictions, easement documents and other related documents. Since successful programs require community buy-in, local governments must market the program to citizens, real estate professionals, lawyers, assessors and planners.

As parts of the U.S. like Flint, Michigan begin to de-urbanize, local governments may see new opportunities to use TDR programs to fight deforestation and sprawl and thus, climate change. While this process may not be as swift as Joseph Conrad’s invading jungle, it has the potential to solve many of our largest problems simultaneously.

Source: Jason Hanly-Forde, George Homsy, Katherine Lieberknecht, Remington Stone, Cornell University

Freiburg is known as an ecocity. The newly built neighbourhoods of Vauban and Rieselfeld were developed and built according to the idea of sustainability. The citizens of Freiburg are known in Germany for their love of cycling and recycling.

This past December, as climate talks in Copenhagen commenced, I sat in talks in Istanbul listening to local government representatives, building professionals and academics discuss concrete actions that can and have been taken to reduce greenhouse gases in cities around the world. The 8th annual Ecocity World Summit posed a compelling alternative to the fights and frustrations that mired the climate talks of Copenhagen in conflict. Cities represent about 75% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and the birth of the “eoocity” concept a few decades ago may have marked the beginning of our most tangible solution yet. From recycling, wastewater treatment and green building to smart urban planning, public transit and renewable energy generation, ecocity plans and ideas have emerged with a list of seemingly “no-brainer” action items to pursue.

While in theory, the “ecocity” may seem like a very straightforward concept, in practice the challenges prove tough to transcend. The urban and suburban sprawl that plagues regions in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand may seem like an almost insurmountable barrier to reducing carbon emissions. However, in Istanbul, a city of 13 million and growing, sprawl is compounded by the fact that much of the development is unplanned. This is also true for other mega-cities like Rio de Janeiro where families often add stories to their own homes, creating unsound structures that may collapse during natural disasters. Such unplanned settlements also make it difficult to create underground tunnels for a metro system, as there may be no record of where gas and electricity lines run underground. Traffic and a lack of environmental practices like wastewater treatment are also a major issue for such megacities.

Historical considerations also present challenges, as the rich cultural heritage of ancient cities demands a certain authenticity of design. Moreover, as cities like Istanbul go to dig tunnels for eco-features like an underground metro, they may discover archeological treasures that force them to stop digging.

In modern cities of intense density like Hong Kong, Tei Pei, and Singapore, a lack of space to erect renewable power generation and urban farming operations create challenges to meeting energy and food demands without importing food and energy. In many developing nations, a lack of laws to regulate pollution and a lack of enforcement for existing environmental laws also create little incentive to move towards renewable energy. Some regions lack the resources to produce renewable energy, forcing them to make a decision between a local energy economy and a clean energy economy.

Approaches to creating an ecocity to solve these problems vary. According to Elizabeth Rapoport of the University College of London, there are three main categories of ecocities. Ecovillages, such as Cerro Gordo in the U.S. are small pastoral communities. Masterplanned ecocities such as Tianjin, China and Masdar, Abu Dabi, are new cities that incorporate ecological principles from day one. Models in already retrofitted ecocities like Curitiba, Brazil and Freiburg, Germany have the greatest potential to transform the already developed world, where builders and planners will have to make improvements on the existing infrastructure and building stock. Taking lessons from other more advanced cities will be an important step in the process if cities want to avoid reinventing the wheel. Conversely, avoiding some of the mistakes that more established cities have made will be crucial for nascent cities in the developing world.

The term “ecocity,” like other trendy terms including “green” and “sustainable” will likely be the subject of abuse over the coming years and decades. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for the cities of the world, the sooner the international community comes together to define an ecocity that really does live up to the name, the more clear direction and success cities will have in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution while improving the quality of life for their residents. Hopefully the local governments involved in redesigning our cities can learn to work together more effectively than did the participants in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, that’s a low bar.

Vancouver is already known for savvy city planning.

Vancouver’s Mayor Gregor Robertson recently announced an ambitious 10-year plan to make Vancouver the world’s greenest city by 2020.  Robertson presented the plan to the “Gaining Ground-Resilient Cities” conference at the Vancouver Convention Center. Robertson says that Vancouver is still far too reliant on cars and on food from far away, and that every day, the city produces too much waste and consumes too much energy and water.

Its goals are:

• Setting up a low-carbon economic development zone to attract investment for advancing renewable energy, energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies, with the object of creating 20,000 new green jobs.
• Making all new construction in the city carbon-neutral and improving efficiency of existing buildings by 20% by 2020.
• Encouraging greater green mobility by having more than 50% of residents walking, cycling or using public transit to move around the city. (According to Robertson, green travel now comprises 37% of trips).
• Reducing the amount of solid waste per capita that goes to landfills or is incinerated by 40%.
• Maintaining the highest international standards for drinking water but reducing the per-capita consumption of water by 33%.
• Achieving the cleanest air of any major city in the world.
• Becoming a global leader in urban food systems and reducing the carbon footprint of food production by 33%. Robertson wishes to take advantage of the Agricultural Land Reserve surrounding the city.
• Giving every citizen easy access to nature by providing “incomparable access to green spaces” by expanding “the world’s most spectacular urban forest in Stanley park” so that by 2020 every person would live within a five-minute walk of a park, beach or greenway. Another 150,000 trees will be planted in the city within the next 10 years.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 33% from 2007 levels.  (According to Robertson, Vancouver currently produces less than five tons per capita – only a few European cities beat that).
• Reducing the ecological footprint of Vancouver by 33% on the way to realizing the “one-planet footprint.” Robertson said the city now has a “four-planet” level of consumption and waste, and the goal is to reduce this footprint from seven hectares to 1.8 hectares per person.

To date, many city planner look to Vancouver as an example of the best practices in urban development.  Apparently, they are just getting started.

Denver is notorious for its urban sprawl.

At the G20, President Obama said he would phase out fossil fuel subsidies as a way to combat climate change.  Recent reports from the International Energy Agency and other institutions point out the scale of those largely hidden subsidies and how they contribute to global warming.

According to Steve Kretzman’s of the Institute for Policy Studies, on an annual basis, globally, there are at least $250 billion dollars in global fossil fuel subsides, and some people think that number is closer to $400 billion. Kretzman believes the discontinuation of such subsidies will be quite profound for climate change mitigation.  He points to a study from OECD earlier this year that showed that if the $300 billion dollars in subsidies identified in the study were taken away, you would get a 10% – 12% reduction in global greenhouse gases.

Kretzman says that on the production side, a recent study shows $70 billion dollars going to the fossil fuel industry on an annual basis, while solar, wind, and energy efficiency get about $12 billion. That’s a massive market distortion.

Not surprisingly, politicians from oil-producing states immediately began defending such payouts to the fossil fuel industry as “tax incentives,” not subsidies.  However, upon examining the massive infrastructure required for automobiles running on gas, there can be no denying both the fiscal and environmental cost of a society based on the conventional automobile. Below are some statistics for consideration:

From the 2008 BP Statistical Review of World Energy: Americans consumed 6.5 billion barrels of oil in 2008, or 22.5% of world oil consumption.  China was second with 9.6%.

While some may argue that cleaner cars are coming down the pipe, the Umweltund Prognose-Institute in Heidelberg, Germany claims a car causes more pollution before it’s ever driven than in its entire lifetime of driving.

According to Runzheimer International, the environmental cost of one car breaks down as follows:

• Extracting Raw Materials: Produces 26.5 tons of waste and 922 cubic meters of polluted air.
• Transporting Raw Materials: Causes the release of 12 liters of crude oil in the ocean and 425 million cubic meters of polluted air.
• Producing the Car: Produces 1.5 tons of waste and 74 million cubic meters of polluted air.
• Driving the Car: Produces 18.4 kilos of abrasive waste and 1,016 million cubic meters of polluted air.
• Disposing of the Car: Produces 102 million cubic meters of polluted air.

Paved surfaces present another hidden cost of the car-based system.  Concrete or asphalt in roads and sidewalks create water pollution and require drilling, mining and transporting of gravel, cement and asphalt. Forty single-family dwellings require 40 times as much concrete in roads and sidewalks as a 40-unit apartment building on a single lot. Moreover, water, sewer, electrical, phone, cable and other services lie under the street and branch off into each lot, so sprawl housing uses much more of these materials.  If you consider that on

Consider that 233,333 square yards of roads and sidewalks per household are required when housing density is three households per acre.  However, only 7,000 square yards of roads and sidewalks per household are required when housing density is 100 households per acre.  That’s only 3% of what’s required for the less densely built scenario – a huge difference in needed materials and resulting costs.

When you note that citizens living in dense urban centers without a car are heavily subsidizing car users through taxes to pay for all of the required infrastructure, it becomes increasingly clear that such a market distortion bloats costs to the taxpayers and is taking a very large toll on the earth’s atmosphere.  Designing and building cities to be dense, pedestrian and bike-friendly locales with the necessary public transport for human mobility would seem the only way to adequately address climate change and the hidden subsidies of car-centric infrastructure.

The Union of Concerned Scientists 2030 Blueprint asserts that consumers and businesses in every region of the U.S. save billions of dollars under the Blueprint.

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently released The Climate 2030 Blueprint which analyzes the economic and technological feasibility of meeting targets for reducing global warming emissions in the U.S., with a cap set at 26% below 2005 levels by 2020, and 56% below 2005 levels by 2030. The Blueprint suggests that deep emissions cuts can be achieved while saving U.S. consumers and businesses $465 billion in 2030.

Meeting this cap means the United States would limit total emissions to 180,000 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2eq) from 2000 to 2030.   To reach the 2020 and 2030 carbon reduction targets, the Blueprint proposes a comprehensive policy approach (the “Blueprint policies”) that combines an economy-wide cap-and-trade program with complementary policies. This approach finds cost-effective ways to reduce fossil fuel emissions throughout the U.S. economy — including industry, buildings, electricity, and transportation — and to store carbon through agricultural activities and forestry.

The analysis relies primarily on a modified version of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Modeling System, supplemented with an analysis of the impact of greater energy efficiency in industry and buildings by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.   In addition, they worked with researchers at the University of Tennessee to analyze the potential for crops and residues to provide biomass energy.

The analysis argues that the technologies and policies pursued under the Blueprint produce dramatic changes in energy use and cuts in carbon emissions as well as strong economic growth.

This sign is displayed on the side of the Dry Goods building in Denver, a city know for its sprawl. While still largely unrealized, smart growth is a pervasive concept in cities throughout the U.S..

The passing of Senate Bill 375 in California last year was a landmark occasion marking a new approach to land use and climate protection. The bill, authored by Senate President-Elect Darrell Steinberg, is the first law in the nation to tie billions of dollars in federal and state transportation funds to plans to shorten commutes, build sustainable communities and reduce global warming.

Through various incentives, SB375 will limit California’s CO2 emissions by curbing suburban sprawl and increasing transit-based development. Communities that plan walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented growth that reduces automobile use and greenhouse gas emissions will get moved to the front of the line for state and federal transportation funds, and buildings proposed near transit lines will have an easier environmental review process.

This legislation comes on the coat tails of a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General, Jerry Brown in 2007 against the County of San Bernardino for causing global warming through rampant suburban sprawl. In that county, households make an average of 10 car trips a day, because their homes, workplaces, schools, stores, and friends are miles apart from each other, and transit
options are limited.

California officials settled that case and agreed to monitor the effects of rapid growth on the environment. San Bernardino County, one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, will be forced to measure how much it contributes to global warming and set targets to begin cutting its greenhouse gas emissions in the next two and a half years, according to a legal settlement.

San Bernardino is not the only culprit. Because of sprawl, the number of cars is growing faster than the number of people in the U.S. Between 1980 and 2000, 1.2 vehicles were added to the roads for every 1 person increase in the population. Between 1980 and 2000, the total number of vehicular miles driven grew by 80%, more than three times faster than the U.S. population increase in those years. Today, Americans are driving over 365 billion miles annually and producing 154 million metric tons of carbon dioxide just going to the store.

However, changing demographics are working in favor of higher density communities. U.S. household size has shrunk from 3.27 in 1950 to 2.03 in 2000. A 2006 Virginia Tech study found that 38% of today’s U.S. homebuyers prefer attached housing versus 25% of Americans who want a detached single-family house on a large lot. Furthermore, the stock of empty lots available in urban areas is ample to get started, with many green builders already aware of the issue and looking to the U.S. Green Building Council’s pilot version of its new LEED for Neighborhood Development program for some inspiration. The program provides the first national standard for neighborhood design that includes compact mixed-use development, walkability, and proximity to transit.

While creating high density mixed-use communities will be an important part of SB375, creating jobs near these centers will be equally important to avoid the proliferation of heavy commuter traffic. California will also need to develop greenhouse gas reduction mandates that look at regional emissions so that urban cities that take on larger populations are not penalized for going high density. Whatever the challenges, California is redefining land use and development in less carbon-intensive ways.

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The Environmental Protection Agency is joining forces with the Department of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development to create a strategy for sustainable, smart growth in the US.   The new partnership means that there will be a new focus on environmental issues when the nation’s housing and transportation needs are being considered.

According to the NRDC, the new partnership will:

• Provide more transportation choices. Develop safe, reliable and economical transportation choices in order to decrease household transportation costs, reduce our nations’ dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health.
• Promote equitable, affordable housing. Atlanta’s Livable Centers Initiative was another EPA smart growth award winner (courtesy of USEPA) Expand location and energy efficient housing choices for people of all ages, incomes, races and ethnicities to increase mobility and lower the combined cost of housing and transportation.
• Increase economic competitiveness. Enhance economic competitiveness through reliable and timely access to employment centers, educational opportunities, services and other basic needs by workers as well as expanded business access to markets.
• Support existing communities. Target federal funding toward existing communities to increase community revitalization, the efficiency of public works investments and safeguard rural landscapes.
• Leverage federal investment. Cooperatively align federal policies and funding to remove barriers, leverage funding and increase the accountability and effectiveness of all levels of government to plan for future growth.
• Value communities and neighborhoods. Enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods – rural, urban or suburban.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently reported that CO2 emissions from U.S. transportation dropped 5.2% in 2008, the largest annual decline since 1990. EIA noted that motor gasoline accounted for 58.7% of the transportation-related CO2 emissions followed by diesel fuel, which accounted for 23.2% of transportation emissions.

graphs

Emissions from Petroleum Fell by 6 Percent in 2008

According to the report, transportation-related CO2 emissions overtook industrial emissions as the largest source of energy-related CO2 in 1999. Since 1990, industrial emissions have declined 0.3% per year while transportation emissions have grown 1.1% per year. By mid-year 2008, transportation petroleum consumption was down by 1,434 trillion Btu in 2008 as compared to 2007. To help reduce transportation-related emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched its SmartWay Program in 2004 in collaboration with the freight industry. Created to foster energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution, the program aims to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 33 to 66 million metric tons and up to 200,000 tons of nitrogen oxide annually by 2012.

Over 30 years ago, Curitiba city planners developed an extensive bus system that operates for less than a tenth of what a subway costs to operate (Photo: Flickr - BuenosAiresPhotographer.com.

Curitiba is the capital city of Paran, one of Brazil’s southernmost states. While Curitiba faces the same problems as other cities around the world – overcrowding, poverty, pollution and funding constraints – Curitba’s city planners have come up with some creative and inexpensive ways to address them:

• Developed an extensive bus system that operates for less than a tenth of what a subway costs to operate
• Implemented recycling programs to address both pollution and poverty
• Created industrial areas to attract new business
• Expanded green spaces
• Preserved historical areas to revitalize neighborhoods and grow tourism

In 1964, with a population of more than 430,000 people, Curitiba’s Mayor, Ivo Arzua issued a call for proposals to prepare Curitiba for new growth. A team of architects and planners from the Federal University of Paraná – led by Jamie Lerner – laid out plans to minimize urban sprawl, reduce downtown traffic, preserve Curitiba’s historic district and provide easily accessible and affordable public transit. Lerner’s team also proposed adding main linear transit arteries to Curitiba to provide direct, high-speed routes in and out of the city. Their proposal was adopted and eventually came to be known as the Curitiba Master Plan.

After his plan for Curitiba was adopted in 1968, Lerner created the city’s first urban planning department to help organize and direct further redevelopment efforts. The city did several things:

• Created Rua Quinze do Novembro at the heart of commercial Curitiba – Brazil’s first pedestrian-only street
• Adopted a trinary road design, called the Sistema Trinário, to minimize traffic in the city, whose population had now surpassed 600,000. The new system sandwiched a central two-lane street restricted to buses and local car traffic between wide, fast-moving one-way streets
• Began developing an industrial zone on the city’s outskirts, which they called Industrial City

In the 1980s in the midst of a widespread economic recession, rising urban poverty and increasing deforestation rates in Brazil, Curitiba rolled out a number of eco-friendly and social programs for their more than 900,000 residents.

• “Green areas” protected from future development were established in Curitiba, and several parks were dedicated to the city’s different ethnic and immigrant groups
• Curitiba’s transit system was expanded and a color-coded system for the various bus lines was created
• Regional administrations were established to decentralize government
• A citywide recycling program was initiated in which Curitibanos separated organic waste and trash, plastic, glass, and metal. The city sold the salvage to cover the costs of operation

Curitiba had grown to more than 1.4 million people when in 1992 it hosted the World Cities Forum, an advance event leading up to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, Earth Summit. The event brought international attention to Curitiba for its bold urban planning. Throughout the 1990s, Curitiba continued to add green spaces and cultural sites, including a new botanical garden and an opera house. As well as new red multicabin buses, carrying up to 270 people each, which were integrated into its transit system, and high-speed bus stops, called tubes.

Curitiba is now home to more than 1.8 million people and continues to be an example for city planners around the world.