Safety, Growth, and Equity: TRANSPORTATION
This is especially important for households without access to a car. Investments in clean transit can also reduce traffic congestion and air pollution as well as improve public health at the community level.
Likewise, transportation projects can also have serious and negative impacts on communities. For example, the practice of siting urban highways through existing low-income and minority communities has displaced thousands of families in cities across the nation, reduced the supply of affordable housing, physically divided thriving communities, and served as a precursor to disinvestment and urban blight in these areas. Additionally, automobile emissions, noise, and traffic danger from highways and major thoroughfares impact the health of families living nearby.
Investments in transportation infrastructure have been a driving force behind regional growth trends and the rise of “suburban sprawl,” a dispersed, low-density pattern of single-use development that makes driving the only convenient mode of travel. In a recent survey, the nation’s leading urban scholars ranked the federal subsidy of the interstate highway system as the number-one influence on the American metropolis over the past 50 years.[4] The 41,000-mile interstate highway system transformed American cities by facilitating suburbanization and sprawl development and triggering white flight from central cities. By paving new roadways to cheap land outside the central city, highway builders made it possible for developers to put new housing and development in outlying areas which were previously inaccessible.
The car is king in California. The state’s residents make the vast majority of their trips by car (86 percent), and 84 percent of trips to work are made by individuals driving alone. Public transit accounts for 2.2 percent of trips annually, 8.4 percent are made on foot, and about 1 percent is made by bicycle.[5] These numbers illustrate the modern reality in California: that driving is often the fastest, most convenient way to get around. Each household is also driving more miles every year, and the increase in miles driven consistently outpaces population growth.[6]
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[4] Robert Fishman, “The Top Ten Influences on the American Metropolis of the Past 50 Years,” Fannie Mae Foundation, 1999.
[5] “2000–2001 California Statewide Household Travel Survey—Final Report,” California Department of Transportation, June 2002.
[6] “California Travels,” op. cit., p. 6.