URBAN DEVELOPMENT FAVORS CARS The physical environments of cities throughout the country have been developed with cars in mind. Our existing mobility infrastructure disregards traffic safety, walkability, bikeability, density, and environmental sustainability in service of personal vehicles, and the dominance of the automobile will continue to disconnect streetscapes from a future of community-focused and environmentally sustainable transportation networks. Small-scale design decisions play an outsized role in affecting how travelers can experience a city; many facets of urban life are impaired by the omnipresence of cars and their dedicated infrastructure. Until alternative modes of transportation such as walking, biking, and public transit can be supported by human-scale and community-scale physical changes to cityscapes, communities and natural environments will continue to suffer. How can we implement comprehensive and inclusive planning and design policy measures at the scale necessary to affect these physical changes in cities across the country?
Streets and street systems are designed for cars. For decades, transportation planners have emphasized the importance of “level of service,” i.e. a road’s capacity for vehicle travel. Their fixation on maximizing this capacity has created new travel lanes to accomodate more cars and has widened existing lanes to accommodate higher travel speeds.56 Furthermore, the very management of these transportation systems prioritizes cars: software is often optimized for car travel and seeks to reduce car traffic delays without considering pedestrian travel.57 When vehicles are not moving, however—which for cars, according to Donald Shoup’s calculations, is estimated to be about 95% of the time—they have to be parked somewhere.58 As noted above, parking requirements tied to development and construction have perpetuated a cycle of car usage, and so too has curbside parking under the domain of municipal governments. Philadelphia alone has over two million parking spaces, leaving about 1.25 parking spaces for every resident of the city across all ages.59 With the majority of the right-of-way dedicated to cars, there isn’t much space left for other road users.
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