Smart Growth Around America

A new report released yesterday chronicles how the record public transportation ridership of 2007 and 2008 helped cut carbon dioxide emissions by 37 million tons in 2008 — and more importantly, how increasing transit ridership in the future is an essential strategy for helping us reach our ambitious national goals of cutting emissions and preventing climate change. Read the report (pdf)

Guest post by Barbara McCann, coordinator of the National Complete Streets Coalition
A new poll out from AARP documents how incomplete streets are making it tough for older Americans to avoid paying the high price of gasoline.  Almost 40 percent of those polled say they don’t have adequate sidewalks in their neighborhood, 55 percent say that [...]

You may have seen oilman T. Boone Pickens around lately.
If not, then you haven’t turned on your television, radio, or opened a newspaper in the last few weeks. He’s been touting his new Pickens Plan nonstop to nearly any outlet that will listen, taking out full-page ads in newspapers from coast to coast and even [...]

Good story today in the Washington Post as part of their ongoing “Oil Shock” series, with this one focusing on the consumer impacts of rising prices. If it’s not already, this is beginning to sound like the theme of 2008, as rising energy prices are like a rudder in the water turning the ship of [...]

The students who live 100 yards from the school are probably still driving to this mega-campus.
Around 30 to 40 years ago, the percentage of kids that walked to school was around 60-70 percent. Go into a room of older adults and ask them to raise their hands if they walked to elementary or middle school, [...]

The CEO’s for Cities study from a few months ago, “Driven to the Brink,” has gained some traction, this time in video form. YouTube’s editors picked it up last week to highlight on the main page, and as a result, it’s gotten over 120,000 plays and nearly 800 comments.
Do check it out below. From the [...]

After years of inactivity while gasoline was cheap, leaders are now scrambling to “do something” about the high gas prices that are making life difficult for everyday Americans. The solutions range from short-sighted (drill ANWR) to ultimately ineffective (national speed limit), and most fail to address the core issue that makes gas prices matter so [...]

updated 6/27: The NYT changed the previous headline from “country living” to the “far suburbs.”
Good piece today in the New York Times, surveying the scope of changing preferences for buying in the suburbs as energy prices continue rising:
Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of [...]

The picture is the same everywhere you look. You’ve been reading it here, in your newspaper, or watching it on the television nearly nonstop for the last few weeks:
Gas is expensive, driving is down, transit systems are packed.
Here in D.C., people are abandoning their cars and taking Metro in record numbers to save money [...]

Unfortunately for the owners of either, they’re both losing value.
That’s the connection — echoed by SGA — in a Wall Street Journal piece this morning on today’s front page by Ana Campoy on gasoline consumption and miles driven trending downwards, and how it’s beginning to drastically affect Americans’ housing and transportation choices:
Meanwhile, people have begun [...]

Almost overnight, it has become the most pressing issue in the minds of most Americans. CNN’s most popular topic this week? “Fueling America.” Gas prices are now competing with Iraq, the economy at large, and even Angelina Jolie for primacy in the national consciousness. If you’re interested in the numbers, do check out Google Trends. [...]

Guest post by Barbara McCann, coordinator of the National Complete Streets Coalition
As Americans watch the seemingly inexorable climb in gas prices, many are looking at their streets in a new way. They are looking for streets that can give them more than a way out of their neighborhood – they need a way out [...]

Another tale of two cities: One is up, one is down.
We’ve noted with regularity for the last few months how rising gas prices were complicit in the housing crisis. (here and here, for example). With every escalation in the cost of fuel, new subdivisions and neighborhoods already in a struggling market face another hit as [...]

MSNBC reported this morning on yesterday’s theme of transit ridership continuing to trend upwards, which is placing a heavy burden on a lot of systems that are running at or near capacity. As they say, transit ridership is at its highest point in 50 years right now. It’s continuing to reach new levels, but it’s [...]

In a society nurtured on cheap gasoline, the high fuel prices are having disparate effects: the end of free pizza deliveries at major franchises, a plunge in the sales of sport-utility vehicles, a steep drop in the price of houses that are far from jobs or mass transit. - Washington Post, June 10, 2008
With more [...]

I know you’ve probably been reading the same stories ad nauseum over the last few weeks about the changes that many Americans are making in the face of 4 and 5 dollar gasoline. As the Department of Transportation noted in numbers released in the past week, driving was down in March 2008 over March of [...]

I noticed some numbers on oil prices that Ryan posted on The Bellows a few days ago, and thought that they were screaming out for some sort of graphical representation. Rather than spend a lot of time crafting some sort of polished graphic to illustrate the point, I resorted to the kind of design that [...]

I’m back from a weeklong vacation, so you probably already saw Paul Krugman’s wonderful column in the New York Times last week that was subsequently posted and emailed all over the place, but it’s worth posting for posterity.
In “Stranded in Suburbia,” Krugman muses on the differences in how high gas prices are devastating our economy [...]

If once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and thrice a trend, where are we now? More evidence continues to roll in that the high costs of fuel are pressing more and more Americans towards making lifestyle changes to reduce their consumption. Two stories over the weekend, one in the New York Times and [...]

SGA communications director David Goldberg appeared on KGO in the San Francisco Bay Area last night, discussing how America is fundamentally changing in light of rising gas prices — as well as a plethora of other factors and trends all converging at the same time.
People have been coming back in [to cities] for the last [...]

In this entry from Greater Greater Washington — one of my daily must-reads here about DC growth and urbanism issues — he digs up a 12-year-old op-ed from Russell Baker in the New York Times about the pain of rising gas prices. (Back when they were spiking over a dollar:)
Sure I’m mad about the price [...]

If you, like a majority of Americans, think that any proposal to suspend the gas tax is a bad idea — bad for the environment, bad for our infrastructure, bad for our dependence on foreign oil, and bad for our wallets— you’ll be interested to see an online petition that was sent to us today:
[...]

The losers: You, me, and infrastructure
A terrible idea that failed Bob Dole 12 years ago, gained second life as a recent John McCain economic proposal, and then became (perhaps surprisingly) a recent centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s platform, is leading the daily news from the campaign trail as Americans feel tightening pressure from rising gas [...]

Chart on housing prices against gas prices from the CEO’s for Cities report, Driven to the Brink (2001 recession shaded)

If you look back over the last two weeks at what we’ve been pointing to in the news and circulating on the blog, there was a clear trend emerging: Rising gas prices and escalating transportation [...]

Author James Howard Kunstler looks at the trends we’ve been discussing for the last week — home prices in suburbs with long commutes depreciating — as well as some that we haven’t talked much about, like escalating food prices and the debilitating effect that high fuel prices are having on airline and retail industries, and [...]

High gas prices are squeezing the housing market on the fringes of metro regions.

It can be scary to turn on CNBC or CNNMoney these days. Watch for just a minute or two, and you’re likely to hear that not only is the housing market in trouble, but we might not be able to see the [...]

The situation: Bridges are falling down, traffic congestion is worsening, gains in fuel efficiency are reducing gas tax revenues, worthwhile transit projects are sitting on the shelf, and the Highway Trust Fund — funded by the 18.5 cents a gallon gas tax that is already inadequate for funding transportation investments — is about to run [...]

As gas costs go up and geopolitical concern over oil supplies rises, many Americans are feeling increasingly vulnerable. But residents in some metro areas are more exposed than others. Places where “affordable” housing lies at the distant fringe no longer look so affordable. Spread-out metros like Atlanta, where Gov. Sonny Perdue cancelled school during the post-Katrina fuel shortage, are especially susceptible to fluctuations in gas prices…