In a couple of weeks (September 14 – 16, to be precise), Long Beach will be host to a statewide conference with this title—being sponsored by CAPCOA—the California Air Pollution Control Officers’ Association. California is so large that air quality is managed not just at the state level (as in many smaller states), but additionally through thirty-five local air districts. “Local” can sometimes mean county-level and sometimes multi-county, as in the case of our own South Coast Air Quality Management District. CAPCOA serves as a forum for sharing knowledge and experience among the state’s air agencies and encourages consistency in their approaches to regulation of air pollution.
Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster will be among those speaking at a plenary session on the first weekday of the conference (Monday, September 15). I’ve been asked to speak on a panel the next day entitled “Clean Transportation System Technologies.” My particular charge is to set the stage by describing California’s transportation challenges. I wish it were as easy to solve them as it is to list them.
One of our fundamental challenges in California is population growth. We’ve gone from perhaps a tad over one million inhabitants in 1900, to some 35 million in 2000, and the state Department of Finance projects we’ll reach 46 million by 2025. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, domestic in-migration has leveled off (that’s people moving here from other states, as I once did), but international immigration and the simple excess of births over deaths will both continue to drive population growth.
A resulting challenge is road congestion. This needs no further description; we’ve all been there, done that. A related challenge is environmental impact. We’ve come to recognize that local air pollution can damage public health, contributing to asthma and stunted lung development. We’re also increasingly concerned about the global effects of greenhouse gas emissions so prevalent from transportation sources (which emit roughly one-third of our state’s total greenhouse gas inventory). (Of course, there are numerous other environmental impacts from transportation.)
Our next challenges are financial. Since our nationwide spending on the interstate highway system starting in the 1950’s, and California’s own road-building boom years up to (arguably) the 1990’s, we’ve seen transportation infrastructure budgets erode until we can barely maintain the roads we have, much less build for the future. (Hence the congestion.) The top U.S. news story on my Google toolbar today reads “Federal Highway Fund About to Run Out of Money,” and there is no assurance of public support for local transportation funding in the form of proposed sales taxes (often called “self-help” taxes). The financial challenge for each of us filling a car with gasoline these days also needs no further description.
So what will it take to make a “green” future for ourselves? Many clean transportation system technologies are already in use, though we might do a faster job of deploying them. Here in Long Beach we have gasoline hybrid buses in our transit fleets – 45-passenger versions of a Prius – and many residents drive actual Priuses or ride bicycles, carpool and use light rail. I’ve also written recently about the state’s high-speed rail concept – another cleaner alternative to flying and driving.
I’ve said before that the quickest way to a cleaner future is to make being “green” the cheapest option. In order to do this, I think we need two things. We need the imagination to see how the world can be better than it is now; and we need the consensus to adopt the right policies. The former – vision, pure and simple – can drive the latter – political will. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that we face great uncertainty: we don’t and can’t know the long-term effects of decisions we make now. But past generations have always made those decisions, and we’ve muddled through so far.
To make some specific recommendations: first, let’s think about ways to encourage use of clean transportation systems. San Francisco recently adopted a program requiring employers of more than 20 people to choose one of three ways to offer cheaper transit options. That’s a model we could consider here. More transit users means more political support for transit funding – possibly a virtuous cycle. At the national level, rather than consider a gas tax holiday, let’s be open to new and creative ways to fund transportation systems (tolls, anyone?) that reflect the true costs of transportation. I’d also like to see more flexibility for government to collaborate with private providers of technology (such as innovative rail systems) and infrastructure, and more incentives to deploy existing technologies.
Back at the local level, let’s continue and expand public visioning and planning processes to design streets of the future that are not only beautiful to look at, but safe for travelers moving at all speeds. One of the key—and overlooked—words here is “system”: how should all the parts work together to get us where we need to go with no undue negative impact—in the absence of a Star Trek transporter?