Photo: L3W

Editor’s note: Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University who writes about the politics of mobility, explains why he’s voting against Proposition G on November 2. We’ve invited the Yes on G side to write an op-ed and hope to publish it soon.

A lot of well-meaning people are leaning towards voting ‘Yes’ on Prop G – the ballot initiative that will amend the city charter and revise Muni operators’ salaries and work rules. They are indignant that Muni drivers got an automatic pay raise this year while at the same time Muni cut service and increased fares to plug a budget shortfall. The “Great Recession” has a lot to do with Muni’s financial crisis, but many think that Muni’s drivers should have made more sacrifices and foregone the pay raise. After all, other public sector employees have been furloughed or fired for austerity measures, so Muni drivers should also do with less. Moreover, “cleaning-up” the labor “culture” at Muni, the reasoning goes, will make the system more efficient and cost effective, and enable more flexible and nimble customer service.

But Prop G is not the way to build a sustainable transit system. In fact, Prop G could set back that effort by 40 years. Here is why.

What does Prop G do?

Prop G eliminates a 43-year-old labor formula established by voters in 1967 (ironically that ballot initiative was also called Prop G). The formula set operators salaries to “not in excess” of the average of the top two highest national transit agency pay rates. Because of this Muni drivers are the second-highest paid drivers in the nation, and pay raises are automatic. Contrary to today, in 1967 this formula had widespread support from the mayor, the entire Board of Supervisors, and Muni’s management. It was widely recognized that the formula was needed to retain a solid, experienced, professional workforce, and 55.4 percent of San Francisco agreed. The ballot argument in favor of the formula stated that “instead of disgruntled employees and labor unrest, there will be satisfied employees on the Muni.”

In the last 43 years there has been no strike at Muni and this arrangement seemed to be fine –until the Great Recession. Muni, like every other transit agency in the country, faced soaring healthcare and pension costs while local and state revenue for public transportation declined. The American Public Transit Association (APTA), public transit’s industry trade group, estimates that more than half of the nation’s transit systems have raised fares AND cut service since 2009, and 80 percent of transit agencies lost significant sources of state and local funding to support existing transit operations. Muni was among those agencies to cut service and to raise fares, mostly because of state cuts to public transportation funding, and decreases in local tax and fee revenue collections that went towards Muni. This is where some well-meaning people have erred in deciding to attack labor rather than the deeper structural problems facing public transit.

Technically today’s Prop G stems from a quibble over a modification to the pay formula made in 2007, when 55.6 percent of San Francisco voters approved Prop A, a ballot initiative that included progressive transit and parking reforms and required the city to take more concrete action regarding global warming. Prop A was a grab-bag of small, incremental reforms to Muni, but its biggest function was to stop a horrible initiative by the late Gap founder, Don Fisher, who was trying to require vast amounts of automobile parking to be built in the city. This would have had extremely negative impacts on Muni service not to mention further fueling global warming. Sustainable transportation advocates were alarmed at what a small group of wealthy elites were doing, and had to find political allies.

Prop G is nothing less than class warfare. Do progressives and sustainable transportation advocates really want to be part of that?

Labor was that ally, and in exchange for tremendous labor resources put towards defeating the parking measure and approving Prop A, a deal was made that included turning Muni operators’ wage cap into a wage base. Without this deal Don Fisher’s horrible parking measure might have passed. Some argue that while the drivers benefited from the tweaking of the formula, they were also supposed to reconsider work rules and allow more flexible (part-time) drivers. But that was not explicit in Prop A, and so that argument is more scuttlebutt than anything else.

After Prop A passed three years ago there was an opportunity to build on the progressive coalition of sustainable transit advocates and labor unions. But for one reason or another it did not materialize and the ad hoc and fragmented nature of progressive politics remained the norm. This is a key structural problem in the city that needs addressing. The transit union is just as responsible for this as anyone, but has now found itself isolated. Today many sustainable transport advocates, especially SPUR, have broken rank with the idea of such a coalition and have decided to join with the wealthy elite and go after labor. But instead of simply pressing to revoke the guarantee of automatically setting wages and benefits, they’ve decided to push the envelope and really gut the labor peace that Muni has had for 43 years.

Prop G will require that wages and benefits be set with collective bargaining rather than set automatically. Fair enough. When SFMTA management and the union reach the inevitable impasse over their contract – and they will – Prop G also forces binding arbitration. This is also normal in labor negotiations and rumor is the union has been open to it. But more significantly, Prop G directs the mediator of a contract impasse to prioritize system efficiency over workers, such that if it is found that operators’ working conditions conflict with management’s notion of how the system should be run, system optimization trumps the workers. This is a myopic and irresponsible slippery slope. It harkens back to Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times, where the corporate executive speeds up the factory’s conveyor belt and forces Chaplin to work faster and faster until he goes mad. (If you do not know what I am talking about, watch this clip).

The type of arbitration that would be codified by Prop G is dangerous and spiteful towards the idea of a living wage and fair workplace. It will lead to tired bus drivers falling asleep at the wheel as they struggle to optimize runs based solely on system efficiency. It may eventually lead to a Wal-Mart style part-time structure of bus drivers with lower skills and wages and less benefits, and less interest in doing a good job. It will lead to drivers bearing more responsibility, unjustly, for the time it takes for buses to move through the car traffic that slows Muni down.

Prop G’s arbitration language is anti-labor by design. It only emphasizes how to extract more for less from labor in order to run the system more “efficiently.” Prop G does not address the endemic traffic congestion that bogs Muni down nor does it address the archaic fare collection system that forces long dwell times on most routes. It lays all of the current financial problems of Muni on the workers while ignoring the fact that downtown property owners make huge profits off of land that is made valuable by Muni access. Prop G is silent on this grave structural problem and the much-needed new revenue sources such as a transit assessment on the downtown property owners who profit from Muni access. Disingenuously, it is these corporate interests that are bankrolling Prop G, revealing that Prop G is nothing less than class warfare. Do progressives and sustainable transportation advocates really want to be part of that?

Photo: Jason Henderson

Prop G is part of a vision

As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Rachel Gordon reported in July, during the signature-gathering for Prop G, corporate interests donated $325,000. Among them were the Chamber of Commerce, the Building Owners and Management Association, The Committee on Jobs (downtown corporate political organization), and an assortment of other corporate interests. As of the October 5th campaign filing they’ve spent at least $466,000 promoting Prop G. Who knows what untold infusions of corporate cash will occur through the remainder of this month. But one thing is clear, when looking at the campaign filings for Prop G supporters, one does not find grassroots small-donors that the Prop G proponents would have you believe undergirds the initiative.

Before voting Yes on Prop G, people should ask – what kind of city do these organizations want and what are their true intentions? Prop G’s financial backers have a political agenda and vision of the city that is not shared by progressives or even moderates, and definitely not aligned with sustainable transportation.

To vote with these groups for Prop G is to contribute to a vision that includes downsizing and disciplining the city’s public sector workforce – not just Muni, but teachers, clerical workers, and emergency responders – many political moderates that work hard everyday and many of whom struggle to afford this city. The goal is privatization or as near to it as possible, in order to decrease taxes, weaken unions, and reduce regulation on large corporate property owners.

Regarding transportation, these organizations have offered very little in terms of ideas for making San Francisco a transit first city. In fact, they generally resist transit first at every opportunity. They want excessive parking for luxury condominiums and they have aggressively blocked efforts at increasing parking fees, creating exclusive transit-only lanes, or discussing transit assessment districts. They will fight to thwart or dilute a progressive version of congestion pricing when it is finally deliberated. And they scoff when clear evidence is made that we need way more affordable housing in this city and fewer market-rate condos. In summary, the very specific long-range political goal of the proponents of Prop G is to discipline labor unions because unions dare to challenge their vision of the city. Their broader goal is a city that exists for the accumulation of profit for the well-do do, easy driving for the rich, and a safe elite playground with ample parking.

The Bigger Picture

Californians are rightly outraged that big oil companies are financing regressive, pseudo populist initiatives like Prop 23, repealing the state’s global warming law. Yet schemes like Prop G are no different. In the case of Prop G corporate interests are manipulating public frustration over local transit problems and the broader economic crisis afflicting San Francisco and the entire nation. The “Great Recession” of 2008-2010 has debilitated public transportation systems around the country, not just Muni.

Instead of seeking ways to expand public transportation and attract more riders, San Francisco’s wealthy corporate class has decided to take advantage of the crisis and use it as an opportunity to scapegoat the 2,200 drivers and operators of Muni. Progressives, moderates, and sustainable transport advocates who have bought into the hype around “fixing” Muni should wise-up. Prop G is a slippery slope that continues the downward spiral in our society of placing blame on the workers. It is class warfare on both Muni workers and ultimately on Muni riders, and it will not create a sustainable transit system.

The Moratorium

After almost two months of failed attempts at "topkills," "tophats," "junkshots," "cofferdams," and "caps-on-the-diamond-cut-riser" it is evident that the BP wellhead spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico has unleashed an unprecedented catastrophe. We made a mistake in wishing away the risks of deepwater drilling. Despite protests from the oil industry, the six-month moratorium proposed by the Obama administration is clearly needed in order for the nation to have a pointed and deliberate reflection about its priorities.

As a Louisiana native I am sensitive to the disruption this moratorium might cause for the 150,000 people employed in offshore drilling and corollary services. Yet take one look at the destruction of a truly renewable and sustainable industry -- fisheries -- and think it through. The offshore oil industry just killed the commercial and recreational fishing industry, it may destroy tourism, and will kill more if we do not get drilling and environmental protection right. How many jobs will be lost because of this ecological catastrophe? And what future start-up companies or footloose firms want to move to a region that is mired in a toxic cesspool of oil? Who would want to invest in property or raise families in a region that has not carefully protected its environment and regulated polluting industries? In the long run, the moratorium gives us time to work this out, and is better for the Gulf Coast economy. It's also best for the nation.

But in the short run, a solid and comprehensive moratorium could mean roughly 1.7 million barrels a day eliminated from the US energy portfolio without any stopgap measure in place to check that demand. Far-off energy miracles in hydrogen, wind, solar, or nuclear energy will not meet the immediate demand. Instead, as Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu points out, the nation might get the 1.7 million barrels it draws from the Gulf from somewhere else.[1]

So what can be done in the immediate future to rectify the whole mess? I propose that we can offset the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by driving 20 percent less. What follows is an outline of how I came to this conclusion, and what government can do to achieve it quickly.

Photo: Jonathan Henderson, Gulf Restoration Network

Offsetting the Moratorium

According to the US Department of Energy's 2009 Transportation Energy Fact Book, regular passenger cars used 4.8 million barrels a day in 2008.[3] That same year light trucks (SUVs, mini-vans, and personal household pickup trucks) burned another 4 million barrels a day. In total, personal household passenger vehicles burned 8.8 million barrels per day in 2008. The 1.7 million barrels per day produced in the Gulf of Mexico, mainly for gasoline, amounts to roughly 19 percent of US gasoline consumed daily for cars and light trucks. For comparison, trucks for freight used 2.5 million barrels per day in 2008, and 1.2 million barrels per day were used for flying.

So if we err on the side of caution and round up, America needs to reduce daily gasoline consumption by 20 percent every day for the next six months, and, I argue, for the next two-to-five years as this deepwater drilling conundrum is resolved. We do not want to hit trucking because that carries our food and goods. We do not want to hit industry, which uses 4.5 million barrels a day, because we want to remain competitive globally (although we could stand to decrease consumption of disposable plastics made from oil). And we do not want to hit agriculture because petroleum, like it or not, grows food. There are various other important things, like pharmaceuticals, eye glasses, and laptops that are part of the 20 million barrels consumed daily in the U.S. We pretty much will want to keep using those things, albeit in cleaner ways. So we are left with reducing everyday driving, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is what the nation needs to do anyway. We owe it to ourselves, to the Gulf of Mexico, and to the rest of the world. And we need to do it now -- not wait for miracle green cars decades from now. So how do we do it?

We should learn from World War Two

Through gasoline rationing, coordination of public transit, and aggressive marketing of the moral imperative to conserve, the U.S. reduced gasoline consumption by 32 percent between 1941 and 1945.[5] In 1941, 23.6 billion gallons of gasoline were used for civilian cars and trucks, but by 1944 it was reduced to 16 billion gallons. More significantly, by 1944 personal driving was reduced to 63 percent of what it was in 1941. Annual vehicle miles traveled per private personal vehicle dropped from roughly 9,500 miles to 5,250 miles per car. The "We Can Do It!" spirit of war on the home front translated into a concerted effort to reduce driving.

Lest you conclude that rationing is some sort of communistic plot, recall that after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shut down Gulf of Mexico drilling and crippled 50 percent of U.S. refining capacity, President George Bush urged Americans to be "better conservers" and asked us to avoid non-essential driving. He also asked federal workers to carpool or take public transit.[6] While this was purely voluntary and amounted to nothing, the point is, an oil man said it. He did not have to, but Bush's people understood the relationship between oil and driving and saw the panicked long lines at gas stations in Houston suburbs. Now, 52 days after the Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank, there has not been a peep about the relationship between oil and driving from the current administration. But I am certain that they understand that relationship, and so I will offer the following suggestions for how we as a nation can reduce driving by 20 percent in order to offset the 1.7 million barrels of oil pumped daily from the Gulf of Mexico.

Flickr photo: Atwater Village Newbie

How to reduce driving by 20 percent (or more):

Federal funding for transit operations

During World War Two, public transit reached its peak ridership in the U.S., and this was largely through coordination by the federal government as part of the national gasoline rationing strategy. Public transit policy was energy policy. While I am not advocating a federal takeover of transit, the federal government can provide something more targeted to transit today -- operating revenue.

Consider this. As part of a voter mandate to study how transit can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transit planners in San Francisco have thought about what would be needed if a substantial portion of motorists in that city switched to transit.[7] Currently the transit system, Muni, is at capacity carrying roughly 700,000 passengers a day. Planners estimate that in order to reduce the city's greenhouse gas footprint by 20 percent, transit would need to expand by 25 percent, and carry 920,000 daily passengers. This actually approaches the city's peak ridership of 970,000 at the end of World War Two, as the federal government coordinated transit for the war machine. But Muni's expansion needs several hundred million dollars of annual operating funds. These are funds that the city does not have. The federal government should make it a core part of energy policy to provide that operations support and to support public transit operations throughout the nation. Public transit is energy policy.

Yet public transit service throughout the nation has been cut because of local and state revenue shortfalls due to the financial meltdown in 2008. That, coupled with increased health care and pension costs for transit drivers, meant rapidly increased operating costs but rapidly shrinking revenue. For example, in San Francisco a draconian 10 percent service cut went into effect in May even as people demand better transit service -- and even as the city's system is at capacity. If thousands of people suddenly stopped driving and took transit, the existing system could not absorb the new riders.

All transit systems in the U.S. need an emergency cash infusion to sustain current operating levels and to expand capacity in order to absorb new riders. In Congress, $2 billion is being proffered as a Band-Aid for this national transit crisis. That $2 billion is not enough for all of the transit systems throughout the nation, and needs to be substantially increased to meet existing demands. The government bailed out banks and automobile companies that it deemed "too big to fail." Given the ecological disaster in the Gulf and the much-needed moratorium on drilling, public transit is now too big to fail if we are going to get out of this.

Photo: Bryan Goebel

Bicycle Systems

Obviously it will be hard to get transit capacity expansion ratcheted up immediately, but Congress can act fast and at least make operating funds available now. But to be clear, in the early phase of the drilling moratorium, transit will not be adequate to absorb a 20 percent reduction in driving. This will take months to bring online. Therefore, in the short-term, there is a quick, cheap, and nimble solution to help get us to 20 percent reductions in driving -- bicycles. Bicycles do not require expensive, long-term capital investment. A bicycle system can be developed rapidly. Unlike transit systems, a bicycle system does not require large operating costs. In San Francisco the modest, off-the-shelf bicycle plan would cost $24.5 million to implement.[8] Though modest in scope it is expected to take five years to implement, mainly due to funding issues, and because of resistance by local motorists for removal of car space in order to create space for bicycles. With political will, San Francisco's modest bike plan could take just six months to deploy and would have minimal operating costs when compared to transit and automobile systems. Repeat this throughout the nation in all urban areas, and this can be synchronized with a longer moratorium on offshore drilling.

Bicycles are practical and can meet many needs. Throughout the U.S., 40 percent of all car trips are less than five miles, the ideal spatial range of bicycling, and some argue that 20 percent of all trips could be made by bicycle if the U.S. built proper infrastructure.[9] In cities like San Francisco, up to 75 percent of voters support new bike lanes.[10] But many people are hesitant to start cycling now. Large majorities of people say cycling with automobiles is uncomfortable, that there are not enough bike lanes, and that it is difficult to cross major streets.[11] Cities can address this promptly by producing truly wide, safe, interconnected bicycle lanes. In most cases the physical space is there to do it. It just requires political will and good paint. Like public transit, a bicycle system is a critical part of energy policy, and at the local level, cities and towns can do their part during this crisis by prioritizing bicycles as a cheap, quick, and effective tool for reducing driving.

Entrepreneurial jitney services

Whenever public transit and bicycles are proposed as solutions, a small but vocal group of naysayers argue that they cannot bicycle to the grocery store and carry groceries, or schlep their children to day care on buses. Some of these concerns are valid for some people, but most people are physically able and resourceful enough to manage. However, one way of rethinking grocery shopping and automobiles is to consider implementing flexible jitney services. This might be an opportunity for entrepreneurs to do their part in reducing driving by helping to promote and establish flexible, on-demand, door-to-door jitney service from grocery stores and other activities currently centered on driving. In many countries around the world, particularly where transit service is inadequate, inexpensive mini-van and shared taxi services are widespread.

While a system of jitneys would take time to implement and no doubt have political opposition from transit agencies and taxi-cab companies, an immediate short-term path to flexible jitney service could be deployed by the grocery store industry. Each grocery store could own and operate a service to provide costumers deliveries when they cannot carry groceries. This is already done in some cities and could be greatly expanded. In New York City several Whole Foods in Manhattan have no parking for costumers and instead offer delivery service for those who cannot carry their groceries home. In San Francisco both Mollie Stones and Safeway deliver groceries. This is not the panacea for everyone, but with creativity and innovation, grocery stores could be an anchor in creating licensed jitney services that contribute to reducing driving overall. More importantly, as more and more people move to urban areas and seek alternatives to driving, more urban space can be used for housing, and less for expensive and gluttonous parking space.

Personal responsibility

Photo: Thinkquest.org

In many coastal states, Republicans like governors Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Bill Christ of Florida have joined Democrats like senators Barbara Boxer and Bill Nelson in opposing new offshore drilling. Reacting to the spill, Schwarzenegger said, "I see on TV the birds drenched in oil, the fishermen out of work, the massive oil spill and oil slick destroying our precious ecosystem. That will not happen here in California..." Senator Barbara Boxer used images of oiled birds in an impassioned and morally driven speech on the floor of the US Senate on June 10. She also praised California's unspoiled coastline and linked its preservation to the ban on offshore drilling in California. Environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity have filed lawsuits to halt offshore drilling plans in the Gulf of Mexico that were approved without full environmental review. Moratorium or not, offshore drilling is going to be tied up in prolonged political and legal debates for years. People in these coastal states and supporters of these environmental organizations have a moral obligation to reduce their driving if they want to stop offshore drilling. And even if they insist that they must keep driving, they can at the very least show support for those who do actually chose to reduce driving.

Individual motorists can start by accepting that the space of cars in cities must be reconfigured to accommodate public transit, cycling, and walking. Motorists who continue to drive have a moral responsibility to discontinue their local political resistance to changing our streets. They'll still be able to drive, just more slowly, with less convenience than they have now.

Throughout cities in the U.S., vocal motorists oppose proposals to re-allocate street space to favor buses or bicycles. Each time a stretch of street is considered for change, angry motorists line up at city hall to protest the change. Our cities are in a spatial stalemate, traffic is miserable, the buses move slow due to traffic, and bicyclists find haphazard, fragmented bike lanes. Often cars double-park in bike lanes, making cycling very unsafe. Meanwhile, car-oriented neighborhood organizations demand that new infill, transit-oriented housing must contain excessive amounts of parking, which then make it difficult to configure space for sustainable transport. Attempts at traffic calming or pedestrian enhancements are diluted by anger over lost parking space or because many motorists simply do not want to slow down.

All of this resistance to change by motorists needs to stop. Motorists who insist on continuing to drive need to step aside in local political debates and cede space to other modes. At the local level this sort of intransigence has been a major barrier to change, and has kept America addicted to oil. Every single skirmish over a parking space or traffic lane sets back progress in sustainable transportation. Individual motorists need to discontinue opposing change, and better yet, vocally endorse the removal of travel lanes and reductions in parking as a necessary step towards reducing oil dependency and addressing climate change. It is a matter of national security and global justice.

Conclusion

Today there is an ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that stems from the insatiable demand for oil and for using that oil for driving. Almost half of the oil used in the US is used for personal driving, and upwards of 68 percent of the oil we use is for all transportation. We can make a substantial dent in our oil dependency, while also giving the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico time to work, by reducing personal driving by 20 percent. We do not have the time to wait for a magical "clean" car decades away -- we must act now.

Instead of seeking to substitute 1.7 million barrels of oil by shipping more oil in by tanker, we can offset an offshore drilling moratorium by driving 20 percent less. Instead of drilling for the sake of preserving 150,000 offshore jobs, the nation needs to immediately order thousands of new, off-the-shelf transit vehicles in the short-term -- stimulating the transit industry. Jobs in public transit can offset lost jobs in drilling. The nation must also help finance cheap and quick implementation of bicycle systems in cities and towns. Local governments can do their part by re-allocating street space to make cycling safer, and to help transit run more smoothly by avoiding traffic. Business -- particularly grocery stores -- can do their part by creating innovative new jitney services for their local communities. And individual motorists can take personal responsibility by not opposing efforts to re-allocate street space for transit and bicycling.

During World War Two the federal government coordinated a massive wartime transportation effort in a very short amount of time. Individuals, influenced by moral arguments, also did their part for the greater good. Today we need to lay out a similar vision in the service of a moral imperative. It was done during World War Two, we can do it again.

(Editor's note: This is an Op-Ed from Jason Henderson, Geography Professor at San Francisco State University, who is writing a book on the politics of mobility in cities. He grew up in New Orleans where he spent much time in the coastal wetlands of Louisiana while also observing the activity of the oil and gas industry. He has never owned a car.)

For almost a century my native Louisiana has been expendable when it comes to America's voracious appetite for oil. Now after over a week of national media attention, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is suddenly big enough to bring President Obama down for a disaster tour this past Sunday.

No one can say when the gushing river of oil will stop. But as we watch and ponder this sorry state of affairs, environmentalists will demand loudly that Obama retract his earlier proposal to loosen offshore drilling policy. Perhaps they are right, but like other Americans, most of those same people will likely keep on driving. So I take this moment to urge environmentalists to reflect upon their relationship between oil and driving. We need oil and are lucky as a civilization to be endowed with oil, but most people are squandering this precious resource by driving. We need to use oil more wisely.

I see incredible value in oil. It is one of the most utilitarian natural resources known to humans. Oil stores tremendous amounts of energy, it is very easy to transport long distances by pipeline, rail, ship, and by truck, and it can sit for a long time without degrading. It can be refined and distilled easily and its petroleum by-products are used in plastics and pharmaceuticals, and are part of the food system.

Wind turbines and solar panels are made from polymers that come from oil. The new alternative energy future promoted by environmentalists will be made from oil. Growing plants to drive cars also requires oil. Oil will be needed to build new high speed rail lines, bicycle networks, light rail systems, electric buses, and new ways of organizing work and shopping through compact urban development. In sum, we'll need to keep drilling for oil so that we can shift to a more sustainable energy path that significantly reduces our overall dependence on oil.

As many environmentalists point out, we do not need to keep drilling everywhere. We do not need to keep searching further offshore, or push into remote, wild areas, or burn toxic tar sands. We need to conserve. We need to reduce per-capita consumption. But most importantly, we need to stop driving everywhere for everything so that oil can be used more intelligently and judiciously.

Roughly 67 percent of the oil America consumes is for transport, and much of this is for using cars to travel relatively short distances on a routine, daily basis. This adds up to over 27 miles driven per day, per person, in the top 10 most sprawling US Metros and over 21 miles per day in most other metropolitan areas. The average household drives over 21,000 miles per year.  Ninety two percent of American households own one car, and 62 percent own two cars. Currently there are 250 million automobiles in the US, amounting to 33 percent of the global fleet of cars, and 325 million vehicles are forecast for 2050 (at a slow, 1% growth rate).

There is no source of energy that will replicate this level of hyper-automobility. Electric or hydrogen cars will need the oil-equivalent of hundreds of coal or nuclear power plants which will also take lots of oil to build.  Where are we going to build all of those power plants? What other places are expendable? How much greenhouse gases would come from building all of those power plants and is it worth it simply to keep up routine driving?  Retrofitting entire cities with new plug-in outlets will require enormous resources at a time when we can’t even "afford" to provide basic upkeep to bridges and highways much less sustain a working public transit system.

The emphasis by many environmentalists on "green cars" has been an awful distraction. Replacing 250 million vehicles with hybrid or electric cars will not cut it. These are oil consuming machines made from polymers derived from oil and designed to travel under 30 miles a day in an urban configuration. That oil needs to be conserved and used to make the "big switch" that we need to survive as a civilization. Any able-bodied environmentalist that regularly exclaims "but I need to drive!" should really reflect on what they’re saying.

Consider the modest lifestyle changes that can be made towards routine daily walking, bicycling, and transit. Even in many low-density suburbs in America, 40 percent of car trips are less than five miles, within a comfortable spatial range of bicycling. Grocery shopping does not require a car. One can simply walk, bike, or take transit, and either come up with creative ways to carry it, or have a jitney service take care of the delivery.

Consider the co-benefits of physical activity, health, reduced greenhouse gases, less noise and less sprawl. In anticipation of rural environmentalists' need to continue using cars, consider that 80 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, and that many small towns are highly bikeable and walkable. Most people can do the switch if they think it through. Car sharing can provide the mobility needed in the rare instance when a car is truly required.

Those environmentalists who are still unwilling to give up driving should at least give up obstructing change. In supposedly progressive cities like San Francisco, many self-identified environmentalists balk at removing parking to create bicycle lanes. Still other self-proclaimed environmentalists oppose removing car lanes in order to create bus lanes that improve transit service. In suburban areas many environmentalists spearhead opposition to compact, modestly dense housing because they view it as a threat to their convenient driving.

Environmentalists and political progressives who insist on driving need to accept that we need to make it more difficult to drive everywhere, for everything, all of the time. We charge the poor to ride transit, and keep allowing fares to rise while gutting service, but many environmentalists have come to expect cheap and easy driving. The sense of entitlement to drive across the city at high speed and easily park needs to be rethought. And motorists need to slow down on our streets so those of us willing to make the change can do so safely.

Instead of the same-old approach of "stop drilling," environmentalists need to lead by example, and stop driving so that we can keep drilling in a thoughtful and reasonable way that minimizes expansion but enables the shifts needed. Otherwise environmental outcries about the spill in the Gulf are difficult to take seriously. There is a car-free and car-lite movement in America seeking to create spaces to live and work without automobile dependency. Please join in helping to create those spaces.

And remember, we still need oil to get us there, so we need to use it wisely.

Flickr photo:sawdevcin

Yet responding to state cuts to transit and other declines in revenue, Mayor Gavin Newsom and the MTA directors he appointed have targeted Muni riders – people doing the right thing – with a dramatic fare increase and significant service cuts to plug a $129 million budget deficit.  Meanwhile, the Mayor and MTA have shied away from increasing parking prices in any meaningful way, and have dropped a proposal to extend parking meter charges to Sundays and evenings. The explicit public policy decision is one that makes transit less effective while keeping driving relatively cheap and convenient. This is the opposite of what we need to be doing. You do not address global warming by hitting 750,000 transit passengers with a fare increase that is proportionately four times more burdensome than the miniscule fees charged to motorists who park in publicly subsidized garages or on our public right of way.

Thankfully, this did not sit well with San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, who rallied to reject Newsom’s fare hikes and service cuts, and who have a different vision about the future of this city.  In his opening remarks at the Budget and Finance hearing Wednesday, the President of the Board of Supervisors, David Chiu, boldly stated that  “if we want to protect the environment, we have to get folks out of their cars” and that “Muni is critical to our life as a city.” Chiu, backed by Supervisors John Avalos and David Campos, clearly recognizes the Muni debate is about more than fare hikes and service cuts. It is a debate about what kind of city - and world - we want in the future. Do we want a more socially just, Transit First city, or a city that stagnates in continued traffic and pollution while sea levels rise?

Newsom’s response to the board blocking his Muni budget is to claim that, without the fare increases, funds that go to health, human services, and public safety will have to be cut.  The take away message is: car drivers are sacrosanct, while social services and transit can wrestle over limited funds.  Ideas like congestion pricing, which has proven effective in London, and which has been discussed for years here in San Francisco, are not on the table. What is even more galling is that Newsom is campaigning outside of the city as an environmentally progressive candidate concerned about global warming. He touts solar and wind energy, “green” buildings like the CA Academy of Science, and boasts about his plug-in hybrid car agenda.  But when it comes to the City’s Transit First policy, his actions are working to cripple it. 

What is the cold political calculus at work with Mayor Newsom’s approach?  One possibility is that San Francisco’s Transit First policy is being sacrificed for Newsom’s political ambitions. Consider that Newsom is running for governor and seeking to appeal to statewide voters. In doing so, he does not want to present himself as a champion of congestion pricing, increased parking prices, or other policies that discourage driving.  If Newsom championed these policies he could possibly alienate suburban Bay Area drivers as well as Southern California voters, who he will need to make headway in the primaries.  This line of reasoning suggests that Newsom takes San Franciscans for granted and cares more about suburban motorists who might vote for him in the governor’s race.  I hope that Muni is not being sold out for the expediency of one individual’s political career, but on the surface, that’s how it looks.

The willingness to suggest that people need to drive less and also pay more to drive is challenging and takes courage.  It offends many people – especially those who do not have reliable alternatives. New York City’s failure to impose congestion charging probably spooked Newsom.  Now New York is facing dire transit cuts just as we are. This stalemate cannot hold. More and more people are recognizing that we need to address global warming in a meaningful way. It is not enough to have green roofs or electric cars.  The urgency requires us to reconfigure our daily patterns and routines.  San Francisco can be a bellwether for rethinking the automobile and urban space, but Newsom’s Muni budget takes us in the wrong direction.

Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir in Yosemite.

Muir never articulated an urban environmental agenda but a significant parallel involves the moral and ethical discourses that were invoked by Muir and by today’s livable city movement.  Both Muir and the livable city movement frame their cause in moral terms and as benefiting society through a kind of civilizing process.  Muir believed that a love and understanding of nature would elevate humanity and help alleviate tension and conflict. Nature was a type of social therapy. Similarly many livable city advocates believe that "how we get there matters" and have a moral discourse that links things like bicycling and walkable streets to good health, less pollution, and less dependency on corporate-controlled oil.  In this framework, urban configurations are connected to wider moral-social problems of over-consumption and excessive materialism.  To address pressing problems like global warming, resource depletion, and alienation, the city of today must be reorganized and made more humane and connected to nature.  This reorganization, like wilderness preservation for Muir, is guided by ethics and not money.

"1905 SP Train Harrison at 21st Mission." Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

But a conundrum arises with this alliance between progressives in the livable city movement and capital. At times the livable city movement appears to have lost some of its populist edge. Again, the story of Muir has parallels worth considering.  Swirling around Muir during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were blunt populist and socialist challenges to gilded age capitalism.  Muir was sympathetic to concepts of economic redistribution and loathed the massive ecological destruction of big capital, but was somewhat detached from the day-to-day political struggle between capital and labor.  Muir even sided with capital for pragmatic reasons having to do with financing the conservation movement. For example, he preferred William McKinley over the populist William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 Presidential election because he thought McKinley was more prone to protect wilderness.  His friendship with railroad baron Edward Harriman led Muir to look the other way as Southern Pacific battled California progressives over labor and other issues. A revolutionary Muir was not. 

The O'Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy.

One last point worth considering is that Muir’s sense of social justice was more a worry about future generations rather than the contemporary class struggle waged around him.  As livable city advocates promote urban densification and reduced automobility, it is worth taking heed of that. A populist working class appeal should be part of the livable city discourse.   For example, as livable city advocates grapple with improving Muni they should not always reduce Muni’s operating deficits to one of obstinate labor unions – as San Francisco’s capitalist class is so apt at doing.  And as pricing is pursued as transportation policy, it should be assured that the revenue go towards improving the non-automobility of San Francisco’s working class and not simply beautification of streetscapes in neighborhoods already endowed with wealth, or towards mega-infrastructure that enhances real estate values but does nothing for making the working class journey to work affordable in both money and time.

Flickr Photos: Sierra Club and Brandon Sutler