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We paved paradise
Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon
So why can’t we find any place to park? Because parking is one of the biggest boondoggles — and environmental disasters — in our country.
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In Tippecanoe County, Ind., there are 250,000 more parking spaces than registered cars and trucks. That means that if every driver left home at the same time and parked at the local mini-marts, grocery stores, churches and schools, there would still be a quarter of a million empty spaces. The county’s parking lots take up more than 1,000 football fields, covering more than two square miles, and that’s not counting the driveways of homes or parking spots on the street. In a community of 155,000, there are 11 parking spaces for every family.
Bryan Pijanowski, a professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue University, which is located in Tippecanoe, documented the parking bounty in a study released this September. When it made the local news, Purdue got puzzled reactions from locals. In short, they said: “Are you crazy? I can never find parking where I’m going!”
That’s the paradox of parking. No matter how much land we pave for our idle cars, it always seems as if there isn’t enough. That’s America. We’re all about speed and convenience. We don’t want to walk more than two blocks, if that. So we remain wedded to our cars, responsible for “high CO2 emissions, urban sprawl, increased congestion and gas usage, and even hypertension and obesity,” says Amelie Davis, a Purdue graduate student who worked on the study.
Despite all the environmental evils blamed on the car and its enablers — General Motors, the Department of Transportation, Porsche, Robert Moses, suburban developers — parking has slipped under the radar. Yet much of America’s urban sprawl, its geography of nowhere, stems from the need to provide places for our cars to chill. In the past few years, a host of forward-looking city planners have introduced plans to combat the parking scourge.
(1 October 2007)
The Good News and Bad News On U.S. Fuel-Economy Trends
Joseph B. White, Wall Street Journal
What Will It Take for Americans To Give Up Speed, Power and Size?
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Looking for some bedtime reading? I have one for you: “Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1995-2007.”
J.K. Rowling, Michael Crichton and Elizabeth Gilbert have nothing to fear. This annual Environmental Protection Agency survey of the state of automotive technology and energy efficiency was published last week just as the United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp. were battling toward their historic new labor agreement. I caught up with it on about four hours of sleep. I don’t like warm milk, and was grateful for the effective substitute.
Still, when Congress returns to the subject of climate change, energy security and automotive fuel efficiency, reading this document, prepared by the automotive technology experts at the EPA, will make you a smarter judge of the preaching and posturing to come.
Bear with the dry prose and you will get a fascinating study of America’s character. We really are the Bigger is Better nation. We are in love with speed, size and power. It’s not just a Hollywood or Madison Avenue image. Our cars give us away.
(1 October 2007)
Hauliers threaten blockades as Brown’s 3 tax rises bring petrol to £1 a litre
Ray Massey, Daily Mail (UK)
Hauliers’ leaders last night raised the prospect of a return to the blockades after Gordon Brown slapped the first of three tax rises on fuel that sent the price up to around £1 a litre.
They said lorry drivers were angry at the 2p-a-litre increase and that the further rises – totalling 7p a litre – could trigger a return to the fuel protests of seven years ago.
They accused the Prime Minister of reintroducing by stealth the controversial ‘fuel duty escalator’ of automatic annual increases – which led to the original blockades of autumn 2000.
“There’s real anger,” said Roger King, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, representing 20,000 firms.
“Although no one’s yet manning the barricades, if it continues like this some may be tempted. These rises are unjustified.
(30 September 2007)
Contributor Norman Church writes:
Back in JULY 2005 I gave a presentation at Peak Oil Day 2005 in London entitled ‘Systems, Interdependencies & Peak Oil’. This covered the problems of the September 2000 fuel price protests and can be found at www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1000&Itemid=2
The article showed just how fragile our society is and how easy it may collapse. It would seem that we may heading for another round of problems.
UPDATE (Oct 2)
Related post by Chris Vernon on The Oil Drum: Europe
A Tuppence Extra?
