It goes beyond just public transit.

[Drunken Irishman]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8411968">This is a fantastic thread about how we need a radical change in our thinking when it comes to mass-transit. I couldn't agree more. This country is woefully behind many other rival nations in that regard. Unfortunately, public transit, specifically rail transit, is still not a viable option for many American cities.

I live in a city that does have light rail. Our system opened in the 90s and has changed the process here a great deal. Now, cities in my valley are demanding expansion toward their regional centers. Even when, a decade ago, many here did not think it would work.

My city is Salt Lake City. The system we have is called TRAX and was built in the lead-up to the 2002 Winter Olympics. It's not as advanced as a great deal of other light rail systems across the nation, but for a city our size, it's ahead of the curve.



TRAX stretches pretty much the length of the Salt Lake Valley. It goes straight up the valley from Sandy, Utah to downtown Salt Lake City (which hugs the mountains north of the city). There it branches off toward the west-side of downtown and more importantly, the University of Utah (which is only a few miles east of downtown Salt Lake City). Expansion toward the airport is currently underway, as is initial expansion toward the western cities not on the map (if you've ever been to Salt Lake City, the valley is a large stretch of land both north/south and east/west). Those cities will finally be connected at some point in the near-future. As will the area of eastern Salt Lake - specifically the neighborhood of SugarHouse, where a trolley is being added.

SugarHouse is a neighborhood established about six or so miles south of downtown Salt Lake City. It's located on the city's east-side and home to Westminster College, as well as Highland High School (Go Rams!) and a great deal of student housing (since its northern borders almost hug the University of Utah).

I will mention SugarHouse a bit later in this article. So that's why I brought this area up.

Beyond TRAX, UTA (that's our transit here in Utah) opened FrontRunner, a commuter rail system, in 2008. This, of course, is still fairly new. However, it connects the northern-tip of the Wasatch Front with Salt Lake City. That is a huge population center. Expansion will connect Salt Lake City with the lower-half of the Wasatch Front (Provo) in the coming years.



For a city our size, having light rail and commuter rail is pretty big.

But I mentioned that we've got to look beyond just public transit. And we do. Public transportation is only part of the solution. It's not, however, the solution. It can't be. It's deeper than that. If it were the solution, many cities in America would have no need for freeways or cars or highways or massive streets.

But as we've seen, even in areas where transit is available, too many people rely in the automobile. They rely on the automobile not because they're selfish or because they're lazy. They rely on the automobile because for the last sixty years we've developed our cities around 'em. Yes, every city.

Even the New York metro.

That's the problem right there, folks. Mass-transit isn't going to fix it alone. You can put up a subway system in Dallas, Texas and you can connect it to the sprawling suburbs and you're still only going to get maybe 10% of the population to use it. 10%. They're not going to depend on it because everything they've been taught their entire lives, every aspect of the way they've lived, has not been tailored around transit - but tailored around the car.

This is the problem. This is what we need to focus on. This is where our government has let us down. They've let us down because they've let, for too long, suburban growth go unchecked. There haven't been restrictions or limits or building codes. City planning has been shot to hell because suburban towns rapidly rise through unchecked growth. It's entirely perfect, in their mind, to allow suburban shopping center after suburban shopping center if it means they get commercial and retail development in their borders.

These towns aren't like our cities. These towns aren't known for anything. Do you know much about West Jordan, Utah? Probably not. Just that maybe, if you're familiar with Salt Lake City, that it's a suburb here. That's the extent of it. These are unknown regional areas that have no distinct characteristic and hardly any historical aspect. But that's fine. They understand that's their image. So they want to be known as the city in the metro that has the only Cheesecake Factor (that'd be Murray here). Or the only city in the metro with a certain type of clothing retail outlet. That's how they get their money.

And to get that, they let businesses come in and develop any way they want. If it calls for a 3,000 stall parking lot that cozies up along side a six-lane highway, so be it.

Salt Lake has great mass-transit for its size. It also has this.



That's Jordan Landing. It's located in West Jordan. That town you've probably never heard of. It's roughly 20 minutes, by freeway, from downtown Salt Lake City.

This is the problem, folks. That photo. That right there is the problem. Mass-transit won't help that.

West Jordan is no different from any other nondescript suburb that you'd find in California, Arizona, Florida, New York or Illinois. They fill every aspect of non-city and non-rural living. They're located in some of the densest and most transit-friendly metros in America. And they're what's dominating the current expansion in a great deal of our country.

That, again, is the problem.

And it isn't just the shopping centers. It isn't just that huge highway running directly through the community. It's the housing. It's the isolation of each house from any real type of non-residential development. If you live in the suburbs, it's probable you live in a subdivision. Not a neighborhood. Your house most likely sits deep in that subdivision, far from a main road and even further from a store or a business or a bus stop.

One of my aunts lives in a subdivision that was built in the 1980s. Her house is so deep into the twisting concrete mess that you could not possibly walk to the gas station for a drink. That would take too long. Not only would you have to find your way out of that maze of roads, but you'd then have to walk down a major street about a half-mile until eventually reaching an intersection where there are two gas stations.

Where I grew up, SugarHouse, it was dramatically different. I never drove anywhere as a kid. My parents had one car and my dad used it for work so during the day, if I wanted to get anywhere, I had to walk. I walked to school. I walked to the corner store (which was maybe five minutes by foot). I walked to the park. I walked to the bakery (a stones throw from my street, actually). I walked to the movies (which were a bit further, but not terribly). I walked every single place when I was a kid.

But if you live in the suburbs, unless you're lucky enough to live in the older, established ones (suburbs that actually were built prior to the dominance of the automobile), you probably couldn't. Everything is so spread out out there in the burbs that it's just not practical.

Again, as I said earlier, it's not their fault. They're not lazy because they don't want to spend 30 minutes walking to the store and then another 30 walking back. It's just how it is. And for many American families, the suburbs proved to be an affordable alternative to city living. That's why all my aunts and uncles decided to leave the city. They left because they wanted bigger homes for a cheaper price. You're not going to pull that off in Salt Lake. The bigger homes are generally pricier.

But that doesn't make it right. Not with how much we know now. It was fine in the 1960s and even part of the 70s because we were still caught up in the wave of freeway and highway development. We were stupid and we didn't know any better. But we do know better now.

So suburban development, at the pace it was in the 80s and 90s, should not be going on in 2010. It's not responsible. Unfortunately, it is. And yes, I do believe there has been a subtle change of mindset and there are good, livable communities being established in suburban areas across this country. That is a start. Unfortunately, it's only a start and it's at such a slow pace that it's being outnumbered by unchecked development nearly across the board.

Which means in another twenty years, we'll still be digging the hole.

Each day there is another suburban development that generally consists of the same problems of the development we saw in the 70s and 80s.

• Each subdivision is isolated from the rest of the community.
  
• Each subdivision still lacks any realistic connection to mass-transit. Even simple bus transit.
  
• Each subdivision built helps promote the idea that you need a car to get by.
  
• None of these subdivisions are walkable.
  

That last one is important because they aren't walkable. Return to that photo of Jordan Landing I showed you earlier. Could you realistically see someone walking to that? Yeah right. And I'm sure, if you live in a moderately sized community, you've seen developments like that pop up all the time.

It's not going away.

So what we have here is more tolerability toward the automobile. More development that will be around for another half-century aiding the notion that you need a car to live in a good portion of the American lifestyle.

Just putting a light rail station there won't end the problem. It might help - but the overall problem remains.

The suburbs are not built for mass-transit. They're not built for that lifestyle. They're not built that way because, for the latter part of the 20th Century, we built up these communities to rely fully on the automobile and nothing else. Unless you go in and demolish every subdivision and start over from scratch, we're still going to face this problem every single day.

Now where I live, it's a totally different mindset. Yes, people drive. Yes, I drive. But we're not reliant on the car as much as those 20 miles south of me. My neighborhood is older, though and was built in an era where not everyone owned a car.

We have a neighborhood center that offers a great deal of locally owned options.

This is downtown SugarHouse:





It's maybe a ten minute walk from my house.

It's nothing major. Just a cluster of buildings that stretch a half-mile or so. But it's completely walkable.

Once the trolley is brought up, it'll connect to downtown rather easily.

Now beyond just its core, the residential neighborhoods are built on the traditional grid of Salt Lake City. The homes are historic, something you can only replicate in suburban areas, but they're again, located in walkable neighborhoods.

This is actually my neighborhood, which is a bit newer than most of SugarHouse (it was established in the 40s):



This is typical SugarHouse neighborhoods, notice the first is newer development mixed in with older housing:







This was just built a block away from the main core shown above:





That's SugarHouse.

To me, it's the perfect neighborhood for someone who doesn't want New York City-style living. It's generally detached housing, not apartments. There is only a cluster of residential mid-rises. There are front yards and backyards. There are parks (SugarHouse Park is one of the most known and largest parks in Salt Lake City):



And it's all located within minutes of downtown Salt Lake. It's also walkable. You can walk from one point of SugarHouse to another without having much obstruction.

Is it perfect? No. There is a freeway that runs right through it (Interstate-80) and 1300 East is still a pretty wide street. But it's far more tolerable than a great deal of what you'll see in the suburbs. Yet it still holds some of the most important traits of suburban living (namely backyards, which, face it, most American families want).

This is how we should be developing our future suburbs. Not the way we're doing it now.

Until we put an emphasis on walkability within our communities, mass-transit will only mask the problem. It won't fix it.

Communities like SugarHouse show that you can live the luxury of suburban America with the amenities of city living.

To me, we develop our suburbs like this and we can begin to ween people off their car. Sure, we'll never have 100% independence of the automobile. But right now, if you're in suburban America, you can't make it without a car. Transit will help, but until we dramatically change development patterns in this country, it still won't be enough.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Recommended. Important topic, well written.

It's a lot of work to put together a good OP.

K and R.

:kick:

[Drunken Irishman]

4. Thank you!

Took some time, too!

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Wow! Just Wow!...Great post...LOVED that last pic, btw!!!breathtaking.

I think that Chicago and its environs are also doing a pretty good job in this direction.
My son lives there. He does not have a car..and has no plans to get one.

there are lots of people who live here in NYC who do not have cars.

A lot of the traffic comes in from the suburbs...which ironically, actually have pretty could public transit access.
If it were a lot better, no one would drive into the city.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Let me add some other stuff that we need to do

bio degradable containers... yep, all that food you buy at the market was touched by oil.

The Green Revolution DEPENDS on oil...

Our lives depend on oil.

Transit, or rather lack off, is but a symptom, of our oil addiction

I mean, realize that computer you and are typing from... won't run without hydrocarbons RIGHT NOW, and cannot be produced without them.

I look around my house and all I see are the products of an oil civilization, and that includes the parrot's toys. (they love nut containers, alas they are plastic, and yes you take them away ok... I dare you)

But our addiction is really deep.

Yes mass transit and building in a different way is a step in the right direction, but we need to move, well to use the slogan from an unpopular company right now since it is accurate, beyond petroleum.

Oh and while we are at them buildings, realize that a LOT of those things that go into that building... have oil in them

[WorseBeforeBetter]

5. Kicking...thanks for the thoughtful post.

SugarHouse looks like my kinda neighborhood, and that last pic is STUNNING.

In keeping with the theme:

THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

[HuckleB]

6. Good stuff.

What boggles my mind further, is that I bought a new car in 1992 that got 30 mpg in the city and was supposed to get 36 mpg hwy. It actually often got more like 44 on the hwy. It wasn't a world beater, but, why are cars like the Honda Fit such a big deal 18 years later, when they don't do much better than that?

[FBI_Un_Sub]

7. Thanks

[Berry Cool]

8. K&R for a very excellent, very thoughtful post about a lot of the problems

underlying trying to get more people to use mass transit. (And a whole lot of information about a degree of public transit I never knew existed in Utah.)

It DOES have to be feasible for people first...and that won't change until the design of living and retail spaces changes. Especially in a country as big and sprawling as the USA.

Of course, there are other factors. Because even in places where mass transit exists and is feasible, people in this country avoid it. Part of it is the vicious cycle that when people don't use it, service gets reduced and then because service is reduced, people don't use it. But our country's overall romance with the private motor vehicle as the expression of our individualism and symbol of our freedom, as well as our means of isolating ourselves from people "not like us," needs to be addressed.

In this country, we're bombarded by images and messages that tell us that cars represent wealth, freedom and success--that the kind of car we choose to drive is an important means of self-expression and ego display--and that public transportation is only for the losers of our society...the poor, the disenfranchised, the outlaw. This kind of image for public transportation just doesn't exist in other countries, yet it's prevalent here. In the USA, suburbanites are afraid to ride buses for the fear that they'll end up sitting next to a dirty, grimy, smelly person talking to himself and flicking a switchblade, or carrying all her earthly possessions with her in a bag, or...well...just people of a different color and social stratum than they are. They don't want to have to ride with these people any more than they want to have to live with these people. They moved to the 'burbs to avoid living next to them, and then they bought cars to avoid having to ride with them.

[lonestarnot]

9. Thank you!

Bookmarking for later. Today is graduation day! Off to get the cake. Next sustainability!