Last week the City released a brand-new Sustainable City Action Plan for public review and comment. I’m excited to see that Long Beach is taking the lead by exploring a wide range of actions to reduce our city’s impact on the environment.
The plan is broad, addressing seven interrelated elements: energy, buildings & neighborhoods, transportation, waste reduction, urban nature, water, and green economy & lifestyle. For each element, the plan gives an overview of the issues, describes how Long Beach has already demonstrated leadership, and sets forth two or three initiatives. Each initiative is accompanied by a number of goals and concrete actions that can be taken by the City, residents, businesses, or everyone.
As an example, let’s look at my favorite area, transportation. Transportation Initiative 2 is to “increase public transit ridership by expanding access, infrastructure, and convenience.” (Now this is an idea I like! I took the bus yesterday to the gym in Seal Beach, then home again. How nice not to have to circle around looking for parking – or navigate that lovely intersection at 2nd and PCH) One of the specific sustainability goals in the plan is to increase public transit ridership 25% by 2016. To support this goal, the plan calls for actions like enhancing bus stop amenities such as shelters, signage, and public art, increasing the number of electronic bus tracking signs that show live arrival times (and by the way, those signs are solar-powered), and improving connections between transit and biking systems with extra bus bike racks and bike parking.
I’d like to highlight one important distinction that you’ll see in this plan. Some environmental impacts result from operations of the City of Long Beach, while others result from the combined actions of all the city’s residents. The plan uses an increasingly common shorthand, referring to “City” goals and “community” goals. For example, many cities, ours included, have undertaken a “City” inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s considerably more complex and difficult to conduct a “community” inventory.
Our Sustainable City Action Plan is full of ideas and actions like the ones I described earlier, as well as facts and figures that illuminate where we are today and how far we’ve come – or how far we have to go. My personal view is that in order to change behavior, we need to look carefully at incentives: the signals people receive that result in this or that action. We can’t rely only on people’s wish to “do the right thing.” One of the most powerful incentives is financial: when something costs more, we tend to do less of it, or seek alternatives. In 2008 when gasoline prices spiked, locally and nationwide, we experienced the first-ever actual drop in driving. Charging more for things like electricity, parking, gasoline, and water can help bring about the usage trends that we hope to see. At the same time, it’s essential that we ensure there are workable alternatives, and that we pay close attention to the effect on those who are less able to pay.
The link I gave above leads to an excellent web page with information not only on the plan, and how to comment on it, but on how it came to be, as well as links to other resources and information. You can learn more about Long Beach’s new Office of Sustainability, which has three coordinators who report to the City Manager. We also have an 11-member Sustainable City Commission, staffed by the Office of Sustainability. Together they developed the draft plan. Take a look and let them know what you think!