Thanks Marc for your thoughtful response. I will circle back to this
when I have more time. Thanks for the many good leads.
Gary
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 12:47 PM, <mbrenman001(a)comcast.net> wrote:
Hi Gary, you might want to take a look at Tom
Sanchez' and my 2007 book,
The Right to Transportation, from the American Planning Association, where
we discuss many of these issues and offer some recommendations. Also, in
Spring 2012, Island Press will publish our new book, "Planning as if People
Matter: Governing and Equity," where we extend some of the concepts to
other forms of infrastructure, directed at the planning profession. You
might also want to take a look at the excellent work done by Public
Advocates, Inc. in San Francisco, and The City Project in Los Angeles,
working with and on behalf of organizations like Urban Habitat and the Bus
Riders Union.
Good first steps include excellent mass transit systems, especially buses,
that cross jurisdictional lines easily.
Reducing and eliminating economically regressive flat taxes like per
gallon gasoline, sales taxes, congestion pricing, and tolling are good
ideas.
Eliminating the extravagant transportation subsidies provided to higher
income Anglo commuters would be a good idea. For example, each Golden
Gate Ferry ride in San Francisco Bay from Marin to SF costs about $28, but
the charge to riders on monthly passes is about $5.28. This is an
example of how the issues are broader than cars.
Deepsixing the idiocy of California High Speed Rail is another excellent
idea. That system would have no benefits whatsoever for low income
people, while sucking off investments that could go to improving mass
transit bus services, which are undergoing severe cuts.
In terms of your example of long commutes to jobs for low income people, a
partial solution would be to have metropolitan planning organizations
include such issues as employment around airports in their plans. Last
year, Bay Area Rapid Transit tried to run a line to Oakland International
Airport with no stops at the minority and low income neighborhoods along
the way. The San Francisco Metropolitan Planning Commission bears some
responsibility for these Bay Area transportation problems.
Means testing benefits such as Medicare, Social Security, and farmer
welfare are good ideas.
Making the income tax system more progressive would be very good. High
income people and corporations like GE should pay their fair share of
taxes.
Eliminating the legal fiction of corporations as persons would be
excellent.
Keeping jobs in the US would be very good. An example of this is the
recent idiocy of having $400 million in New San Francisco Bay Bridge parts
built in China, when they could have been built at the ex-NUMI factory in
the East Bay, and at the ex-Oakland Army Base and ex-Alameda Naval Air
Station.
Gentrification is a very complicated concept, with pros and cons. It
crosses racial lines. For example, in Anacostia, a neighborhood of
Washington, DC, middle class African-Americans are gentrifying a
traditional working class African-American neighborhood, because of the
good housing stock, proximity to downtown DC, and good views.
These are just a very few ideas and considerations in response to your
excellent questions.
Marc
------------------------------
*From: *"Gary Toth" <garytoth51(a)gmail.com>
*To: *mbrenman001(a)comcast.net
*Cc: *"TRB Health and Transportation" <h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net>
*Sent: *Wednesday, December 21, 2011 9:12:34 AM
*Subject: *Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing
So Marc, what is your solution? I have heard many others rise concerns
about gentrification over the years, but few solutions. As a silly old
engineer, I am left to conclude that the default solution is to allow
neighborhoods to continue to suffer because that depresses the price of the
housing stock.
Seven or eight years ago, I had the good fortune to sit at a lunch table
with two major advocates of minorities and low income populations. Since
as an engineer just learning about the good and the bad associated with
Smart Growth, New Urbanism, Context Sensitive Solutions ... I shared my
concerns with these two folks who had devoted their careers to supporting
social equity. Their answer:
The solution to affordable housing and social equity is to not stop making
improvements/investments that raise property values and rebalance the
transportation system. NO NO Absolutely NO, I was told, the solution is
not to perpetuate "slums", it is TO MAKE EVERY OTHER PLACE WALKABLE AND
MIXED USE. Who are we kidding -- I was told -- "do critics raising the
gentrification flag honestly believe that folks are better off where they
are."
When I went back to my work at NJ Department of Transportation, the
meaning of what these two folks told me became more clear. One of the
problems my office had to solve was how to deal with the ordeal that low
income wage earners faced in commuting 90 minutes to two hours from
"affordable" neighborhoods in inner cities to the job supply in car
oriented suburbs. Low income workers often had to take two to three buses
because of the suburban densities and car orientation -- the result of
pricing the system to advantage middle income car owners. When they got
to the work site, they were dropped of onto a high speed 100% car oriented
arterial designed to cater to the middle class car owners -- and literally,
their were several fatalities a year, involving workers trying to dash
across the roadway to get from the bus stop to the worksite. It became
clear that the system was planned, designed and priced -- rigged -- to
further disenfranchise this already struggling segment of our population.
So, I ask again, what is your solution if it is not rebalancing the system
by pricing, smart growth, and multimodal transportation? Does your
analysis about the Boston to Washington corridor reveal how many of the
unemployed and minimum wage families can afford multiple cars and whether
they can afford the gas to make those 500 mile commutes? Am I wrong in
presuming that minimum wage folks are less likely to own Prius's and more
likely to own -- if at all -- a gas guzzler?
Please consider this a serious question. As a transportation engineer, I
am still trying to learn who to deal with the inequities of a car oriented
transportation system.
On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 6:15 PM, <mbrenman001(a)comcast.net> wrote:
Hi Gary, this is based on a per trip cost, due
to lack of discretionary
income to pay for tolls. A twenty to fifty year period is just too long to
make useful estimates for. The pricing estimates are almost always too
low, by 40 to 200% percent, for large projects, and the ridership estimates
too high. Both of these factors were in evidence in the Cal High Speed
Rail project. In the case of San Francisco, the study cited, very few low
income people still live in the city, since rent control (another
initiative that seemed like a good idea at the time) is destroying the
housing stock and raising rents through the roof to the moon. Seemingly
good initiatives like light rail down Third Street to Bay View/Hunter's
Point are creating gentrification that is driving out the last
African-American community in SF.
Those who like congestion pricing, tolls, and cordons say that much of
the revenue from them will be devoted to better mass transit, but this has
happened nowhere in the US, and in only a couple of cities in Scandinavia.
And California, even the Bay Area, isn't Scandinavia...In the US, the tolls
go almost entirely to paying for the tolling system, including the salaries
of those who administer it, the private contractors who provide the
electronic sensing equipment and software, and the law enforcement
officials who enforce it.
If you want to see evidence of how tolls work in practice, drive
north-south on the East Coast. One can easy pay over $30 in tolls from DC
to Boston, one-way. If I'm unemployed or earning minimum wage, how will I
pay that? And gas and insurance and maintenance. I might get forced
onto a “chinatown” bus. This will still cost me about $48 one way. Lower
income people already pay a higher percent of their family income on
transportation than higher income people. Imposition of congestion
pricing, tolls, and cordons just sticks it to them more. One end result
is less social and physical mobility, and less ability to get to jobs. One
can say, well, those folks should just take public transportation. But
shouldn’t they have the same choices as other people in the US? And
many jobs, shopping, and educational opportunities can’t be accessed by
public transportation without a huge investment in time. So lower
income people forced onto public transportation often become time poor as
well.
Marc
------------------------------
*From: *"Gary Toth" <garytoth51(a)gmail.com>
*To: *"TRB Health and Transportation" <h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net>et>,
mbrenman001(a)comcast.net
*Sent: *Tuesday, December 20, 2011 2:51:50 PM
*Subject: *Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing
Marc, is your conclusion based on a study of the overall life cycle of
how congestion pricing can change land use and transportation
infrastructure over a 20 to 50 year period, or is it based on the immediate
per trip cost? Also, if you are citing a study, did that study evaluate
how many of the lower income folks are commuting in from the suburbs, as
opposed to already living within the "priced zone" and therefore who might
benefit from a re-pricing of the trip into the center?
Gary
On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:26 PM, <mbrenman001(a)comcast.net> wrote:
Unfortunately, congestion and road pricing have
economically regressive
effects on low income people.
Marc Brenman
Social Justice Consultancy
mbrenman001(a)comcast.net
240-676-2436
------------------------------
*From: *"Megan Wier" <Megan.Wier(a)sfdph.org>
*To: *h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net
*Sent: *Tuesday, December 20, 2011 10:18:27 AM
*Subject: *[H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing
Hi everyone -
I wanted to share the following report summarizing the findings of a
health impact assessment (HIA) of a potential road pricing program in
San Francisco conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public
Health's Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability as I thought it
may be of interest to the list. The HIA was completed this Fall with
funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Active Living
Research
Program. A summary and detailed technical report of the findings are
available at:
http://www.sfphes.org/HIA_Road_Pricing.htm.
For the HIA analysis, SFDPH used a variety of methods to assess
potential transportation-related health effects - including air
quality-related premature mortality, traffic noise-related annoyance
and
heart attacks, injury to pedestrians and cyclists, and health benefits
from active transportation – and evaluated health-related equity
effects
and associated economic value. The HIA found that transportation
system
operation in San Francisco has substantial health burdens and benefits
today. Health burdens are expected to increase in the future owing to
increasing motor vehicles on local roadways and increasing population
densities in already congested areas. However, there are also
estimated
increases in active transportation (walking and biking) that bring
some
health benefits and save lives. Road pricing, if implemented, could
moderate but not entirely eliminate the changes associated with a
future
under “business as usual” that includes increasing populations and
traffic and no new policies or funding to manage the transportation
system. Road pricing could also generate significant economic value by
reducing transportation-related adverse effects and increasing walking
and biking. HIA recommendations include increasing congestion pricing
fees where they can reduce health risks (e.g., on spare the air days)
and investing in targeted infrastructure to reduce pedestrian and
cyclist injury and increase active transportation.
Thank you, and happy holidays!
-------------------------------------------------------------
Megan L. Wier, MPH, Epidemiologist
Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability
San Francisco Department of Public Health
phone: 415-252-3972, fax: 415-252-3964
Megan.Wier(a)sfdph.org
www.sfphes.org
_______________________________________________
H+T--Friends mailing list
H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net
http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends
_______________________________________________
H+T--Friends mailing list
H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net
http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends
--
609-397-3885
--
Gary
609-468-2943 (c)