awesome post by jacob mckean, the guy behind soon-to-exist Modern Times Brewery.

back their kickstarter campaign to unlock a $2400 donation to bikeSD!!

In 2008, the World Heath Organisation estimated that between the years 2000-2015, car accidents around the world would kill 20 million people and cause 200 million serious injuries. Cars, of course, also spew loads of pollution, which also kills people and causes all manner of health & environmental problems. That’s a lot of death and suffering for a transportation system that sucks to use.

Cars also make our cities much less interesting places to live. The density of cities like New York and San Francisco—which are far less car-dependent than San Diego—is precisely what makes them more vital and creative; sprawl is fundamentally stultifying.

Sprawl also chews up an insane amount of land, which should be criminal in a bioregion as singularly gorgeous as San Diego. Consider that one thousand people could comfortably live in a car-free town the size of an average commuter parking lot (with ample open space in the heart of it).

Modern Times exists to make extraordinary beer. But it’s also an actor in the life of this city. It has a responsibility to shape its own environment, to constructively engage with the city upon which it relies. One of the ways it will do that is by helping to transform San Diego into a better, more livable place.

San Diego should look like this:

Los Angeles (!)

And like this:

Paris

If that seems far-fetched, it shouldn’t. There’s no reason why San Diego can’t look like those pictures; it’s simply a matter of creating the will to transform strip malls and auto parks into human-scale buildings and car-free streets.

But’s it not just that San Diego should be the most gorgeous, walkable, sustainable city in the world; it should also preserve the unbelievably beautiful land that surrounds it. Due to an absence of vision and an excess of greed and laziness, huge swaths of San Diego County’s almost unimaginably stunning and irreplaceable land has been converted into a sea of asphalt.

This is what San Diego looks like without sprawl:

Laguna Mountains

And like this:

Mount Woodson

We should save as much of what remains as we can.

So that will be one of the social missions of Modern Times. If you think you can help, get in touch. Obviously we’re not going to be giving away cash anytime soon, but we’ll do what we can to leverage our beer and our space and our voice to help.

The social costs of driving that are not paid by the driver amount to a $300 billion subsidy each year. The EPA (Lowe, 1988) found that if employees were directly handed this subsidy, transit and bicycle use would go up and auto traffic would go down by 25 percent. A Seattle study found that society pays a $792 subsidy to each motorist each year (excluding a $1,920 annual free parking subsidy). In New York City, the metro area loses $55 billion each year in hidden auto costs associated with safety and environmental damage. More than 90 percent of all commuters park for free at work.

…Dispersed, auto-dependent development in Loudoun County, Virginia, is a net loss to the tax base of $700 to $2,200 per dwelling unit. In San Jose, California, planners determined that such development would create annual deficits of $4.5 million compared to a $2 million surplus if future development is compact.

nozziwalkablestreets, 05.03.13.

next time you’re reading the comments on a news article and some ignorant biased guy caps locks saying bicyclists should pay for the road, get licenses, etc, point them to this article.

LUDDEN: Is it a generational thing?

DARLINGTON: I think it is. And, you know, we’re talking about a lot of big broad cultural changes that have taken place. That statistic that you mentioned — in 1969, 48 percent of kids walked to school. Today it’s 13 percent. And part of that is suburban sprawl. Today’s schools are — they build schools bigger and further from the center of town with more kids, so it’s further away. I personally think that’s all the more reason for kids to ride bikes. It’s a good reason for them not to walk. It’s pretty far. But a bicycle is a good solution to that. And then there’s all the other stuff that, you know, adults are prey to these days, mostly, as Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists, puts it, things involving a small screen, namely computers and video games and things like that.

16mins, npr. or read the transcript. 02.05.12.

visualoop:

(via humanscalecities)

In an area renowned for clogged freeways and sprawl, the region’s sustainability challenges are immense. Riverside-San Bernadino, for example, claimed the number one spot as the nation’s most sprawling metro area in Smart Growth America’s definitive 2002 study, Measuring Sprawl and its Impact. In a separate index, the southern California area was identified by the Brookings Institution (using 2006 data) as having the nation’s highest rate of driving per person. The transportation analysis firm INRIX, which issues an annual “National Traffic Scorecard,” ranks the region as also having the nation’s worst traffic congestion, based on sophisticated measurements of travel delays. Indeed, five of the nation’s ten most congested freeway corridors, INRIX reports, are located in Southern California. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the region’s air quality is notorious. It is the worst in the country for pollution by ozone smog, which can impair breathing function, according to the American Lung Association. It is the second worst for particle pollution, which causes heart and lung disease and premature death. In addition, two southern California counties – Los Angeles and Orange – are among the nation’s 20 riskiest for developing cancer from breathing toxic air pollution, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The region is fifth worst for per capita carbon emissions from transportation (though its mild climate and resulting low residential energy demands help keep overall emissions relatively low).

atlanticcites, 12.04.12.
SCAG passes plan to remake transit identity. sfgate/AP, 04.04.12. 

But “it’s not all about transit,” says CNT’s transportation and community development program director, María Choca Urban. In fact, of the key characteristics that correlate with low transportation costs, transit is the least important. More important than access to mass transit, are densely developed, compact neighborhoods with lots of amenities like grocery stores, schools, and jobs, Urban says — in other words, communities where residents don’t have to travel long distances to meet their basic needs.

Jobs, you say? Dense neighborhoods? We’ve been subsidizing sprawl for decades, and the recession has made jobs few and (literally) far between.

grist.org, 28.02.12.

For decades, SANDAG has favored funding more roads and freeway widening to serve sprawl development as the City has grown. Despite a transit emphasis promoted by stakeholders throughout the drafting of the Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (2050 RTP/SCS), SANDAG leaders are poised to approve this sprawl-first model of ‘sustainability’ that will set a precedent for the nation and commit the region to 40 more years of the same misguided planning principles. For most of us, that’s a lifetime. We have a chance to seize this opportunity to achieve sustainability goals, but the current Plan will only serve to promote further sprawl and greenhouse gas emissions, perpetuating poor land use and traffic congestion.

Although the very goal of SB 375 is to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and by extension emissions, San Diego’s 2050 RTP/SCS would actually increase VMT in the region by 50 percent over the next 40 years. By 2050 it will only achieve a 9 percent GHG reduction per capita — if it even reaches the levels mandated by SB 375 at all.

The state attorney general has even sharply criticized the RTP.

The failure of SANDAG to contemplate a plan that will achieve a meaningful shift in realistic sustainability planning runs contrary to the results of multiple public polls and community outcry for an effective integrated light rail/multimodal solution. In response, the Cleveland National Forest Foundation (CNFF), through its Transit San Diego campaign, has submitted an alternate planning model for SANDAG’s consideration. This “50-10 Transit Plan“ commits funding 50 years’ worth of transit infrastructure into the first 10 years of implementation. CNFF has also submitted multiple comment letters promoting transit first and opposing SANDAG’s sprawl-development-friendly plan throughout the planning process.

Prioritizing transit as in the CNFF proposal would finally address the fundamental transportation challenges instead of just doubling down on more cars for another generation. We know that SANDAG’s choices will be felt throughout the region and across the country. Indeed, we’ve already seen the chair of SANDAG lobbying for the rollback of EPA standards in order to accelerate highways throughout Southern California. Before this accelerates further, we have a chance to demand responsible transportation development this Friday — but we need all the help we can get.

calitics, 24.10.11.

Occupy San Diego will definitely be helping out. Come out and join the fight for a better future!—and not a compromised one that has been proven to be unsustainable. 

Occupy San Diego will be marching early in the morning from Civic Center to very closeby SANDAG offices in the Wells Fargo building at 401 B St., suite 800, to attend the 9am Board of Directors meeting and protest against the 2050 Final Regional Transport Plan.

Here is the alternative San Diego transit plan to have 50 years of transportation changes done in 10 years: The 50-10 Transit Plan.