U.S. Road to Ruin

Driving is more hazardous than anyone knew: A heavy commuter inhales more pollution while driving than in the entire rest of the day, a new study finds.

The research was done in Los Angeles, where the average driver spends 1.5 hours behind the wheel. That time in traffic accounts for 33 to 45 percent of total exposure to diesel and ultrafine particles (UFP), the study showed.

On freeways, diesel-fueled trucks are the source of the highest concentrations of harmful pollutants.

"If you have otherwise healthy habits and don't smoke, driving to work is probably the most unhealthy part of your day," said Scott Fruin, assistant professor of environmental health at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. "Urban dwellers with long commutes are probably getting most of their UFP exposure while driving."

Ultrafine particles are of particular concern because, unlike larger particles, they can penetrate cell walls and disperse throughout the body, Fruin said. Particulate matter has been linked to cardiovascular disease, but the ultrafine fraction on roadways appears to be more toxic than larger sizes.

Previous research found children on school buses breathe more pollution. And a study in London found people in taxis, buses, and cars all inhale substantially more pollution than cyclists and pedestrians.

In the new study, researchers measured exposure by outfitting an electric vehicle with air pollution instruments. A video recorded surrounding traffic and driving conditions on freeways and arterial roads throughout the Los Angeles region. Measurements were collected during a three-month period from February to April 2003, and four typical days were selected for a second-by-second video and statistical analysis.

"This study was the first to look at the effect of driving and traffic conditions at this level of detail and to demonstrate the specific factors leading to the highest pollutant exposures for drivers," Fruin says. "The extent that a specific type of vehicle—diesel trucks—dominated the highest concentration conditions on freeways was unexpected."

Driving with the windows closed and using recirculating air settings can modestly reduce the particle pollution exposures but does not reduce most gaseous pollutants, the researchers concluded.

"Shortening your commute and spending less time in the car will significantly reduce your total body burden of harmful pollutants," Fruin said.

The study was supported by the California Air Resources Board

Whether the Democrats or Republicans want to admit it, the United States is at a crossroad with respect to Land Use and Transportation Policy. 

For over 50 years since the beginning of the interstate highway era, we have enjoyed (relatively speaking) cheap oil, cheap energy, cheap roads, cheap cars, cheap land and low taxes.  The result has been virtually unimpeded automobile dependent sprawl in every major population center across the country.  We are essentially married to our vehicles, married to the goal of a house in the suburbs and addicted to oil.  An automobile trip is required for every errand we make and we cannot survive even a day without our car (or a loaner car when our car is in for repairs). Instead of designing our future to accommodate people, we are designing our future to accommodate more cars.

While certainly the automobile has brought improvements in mobility and quality of life during the past 50 years, there are new events on the horizon that suggest that this will not be the case for the next 50 years.

Both the Democrat and Republican Parties continue to support maintenance of the status quo in terms of automobile dependent land use and transportation practices and policy.  As a result one might question the influence of the big oil corporations, the trucking industry, highway engineering and construction firms and the automobile industry in general on the political process in this country. 

Without these influences, any rational person should be screaming for radical change in our transportation and land use policies.

In Colorado, regional and macro-regional approaches to development that promote self sustaining communities and compact, infill, mixed use, pedestrian, public transit and bicycle friendly development (and discourage residential development at the edges of urbanized areas), take a back seat to parochial interests, private property rights and the profit motives relating to auto-dependent development and sprawl.  Complete street programs that prioritize pedestrian, bicycle and transit facilities on a par with automobile facilities are discounted as less important than continued roadway expansion.  Public transportation continues to be stigmatized as too expensive, too highly subsidized; no one will ride it…, while low density auto-dependent development continues at alarming rates. 

Regional transportation policy continues to prioritize expanding roadway and parking capacity to fuel auto-dependent travel behavior and auto-dependent development practices and promote congestion instead of solving it. 

Instead of designing our future to accommodate people, we are designing our future to accommodate more cars.  

In essence, cars have become more important than people in our planning process.  We are also making the assumption that motor vehicle fuel for our cars will be available forever. 

National studies confirm that expanding roadway capacity in any major transportation corridor simply provides an incentive for those travelers that were avoiding peak periods, using car pools, or taking alternate routes or alternate modes, to get back into their single occupancy vehicle and drive in the corridor during the peak period until the congestion level quickly reaches where it was prior to the capacity expansion.  But still roadway expansion is still the transportation planning norm throughout the state and country which is widely accepted by elected officials and state and federal decision makers.

The Political Parties as well as most of the American public will only wake up when there is a significant energy crisis, motor vehicle fuel shortage, considerable recession, or perhaps all of the above (unfortunately, the most likely scenario within the next 5 to 10 years).

The Republicans especially continue to dismiss global climate change as NOT being a human induced condition and continue to deny world peak oil production in the hope that we will discover immense new oil reserves tomorrow or develop a new miracle oil replacement and have its production ramped up to replace the 21 million barrels a day that America consumes today in the next 5 to 10 years. 

These subjects are not pleasant and as a result both Parties are taking a reactive approach instead of the proactive approach which is certainly necessary.

The reality is that oil isn’t going away anytime soon, but will just become increasingly more expensive as global demand far exceeds the global production capacity.  Driving as a necessity will continue, but will eventually become more limited depending on an individual’s financial status.  The more affluent folks won’t have a problem, but the expanding middle class will struggle.  Discretionary motor vehicle travel will decline for the middle class, but will be a mainstay for the affluent who seem to dominate the transportation and land use policy debate in Colorado.

Two other trends are worth noting in this discussion.  The first is that as Americans, the top one percent of wage earners are growing significantly wealthier, while the rest of us are growing poorer.  In 2000, the top one percent of American wage earners took home fifteen percent of the gross national income, while in 2006 they took home twenty two percent of the gross national income.

The expanding middle and lower classes will be most affected by increased motor vehicle fuel prices or fuel shortages, increased fuel tax, new vehicle miles traveled fees, tolls and the cost of new vehicle technologies and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Pedestrian, bicycle and public transportation options will become equally if not more important than driving for this group in order to maintain some level of mobility.

The second is that we are getting older.  As the Baby-Boomer generation retires, less of us will be commuting to jobs five days a week and more of us will be looking for low maintenance, senior and pedestrian friendly places to live.  The big house with a yard in the suburbs that was so attractive when we were younger will be too expensive to heat and cool and too much work to take care of in our senior years.  The demand for smaller, low maintenance, energy efficient homes in senior, pedestrian, bicycle and public transit friendly neighborhoods will increase significantly.

Younger folks with the financial means may be driving more, while older folks, especially those on fixed incomes will be driving less.

The current norm of auto-dependent development and continued highway expansion must be challenged as unsustainable and inappropriate based on these very likely future trends.  Alternate development and transportation policies must be aggressively pursued including incentives for complete streets, self sustaining communities, energy efficient, infill, compact, mixed use, pedestrian, bicycle and transit friendly development and penalties for rural development at the edges of urbanized areas that promote increased driving and increased automobile dependency. 

Leadership on a state and national level demands that the status quo be challenged and better solutions be pursued and obtained. 

Unfortunately, the Republican and Democrat parties are driven by special interests and big campaign contribution dollars.  Both are not willing to either seek truly innovative and superior solutions to the status quo of inefficient and ineffective transportation and land use policies, or stick up for the middle and lower classes and future generations that will be most affected by the poor transportation and land use decisions we are making today. 

Instead, we appease special interests and rely on lofty consensus building processes that conform to the status quo and appease the greatest number of conformists in our transportation and land use discussions.  Why should we rock the boat?  We have cars and highways today, we will have more cars and more highways tomorrow.  What’s going to change?

Sooner or later we are going to face severe economic constraints on our development and travel behavior that will mandate increased reliance on public transportation and compact, mixed use, pedestrian, transit and bicycle friendly development so that we can live, work and play in the same community (absent an automobile trip for every errand).  The infrastructure and national security debt that we are passing on to our future generations in order to maintain our automobile culture is irresponsible and inexcusable. 

Highway expansion results in the irretrievable consumption, exploitation and destruction of our natural resources and environment.  Unanticipated consequences of highway expansion such as Global Warming, worldwide terrorism incidents and escalating political conflicts fueled by shrinking oil supplies, will not only eliminate personal freedoms for future generations, but possibly jeopardize the future of the Human Race.