Without
the power to restrain individual freedoms, US city and regional planning
institutions are weak. This is painfully true in northern California’s Silicon
Valley -- a narrow north-south stretch along the southwest shore of San
Francisco Bay. SV is hemmed in on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains. West of
them is the precious, lightly developed Pacific Coast.
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Booming Silicon Valley stretches from San Franciso at the norther tip
of the western shore of the Bay south and San Jose. - courtesy of Lawrence Livermore Labs
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Most
of Silicon Valley is a string of suburbs stretching south from SFO Airport in
the north ending more or less in San Jose. To say that this is hot real estate
is no exaggeration. It is home to a techno-corporate powerhouse that generates
cutting-edge thinkware and generates thousands of jobs This makes for very
pricey real estate with little room to grow except up.
Weak
US Planning
America’s
political culture is one of individual freedoms and minimal local governance.
Physically, most of America is a spread of parking lots and highway-oriented
development spilling out with residential neighborhoods of modest density that
spill out into scattered housing. This is so unlike the tightly regulated
cities and towns of Europe.
The
Bay Area has a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) known as the MTC. The
Metropolitan Transportation Commission oversees a highly structured planning
process for the region’s transportation infrastructure -- essentially the highways
and mass transit. In theory MTC works toward the future well-being of a vast
area, Silicon Valley being one sub-region.
Like
most states, California has no coherent statewide development policy. Silicon
Valley’s economic success in the absence of proactive planning has blown the
cost housing sky-high and choked up the highways with traffic.
Where
is a Sense of Vision?
Despite
attempts by INIST, San Jose State’s Mineta Center and pod activist Rob Means, local and regional
officials in Silicon Valley don’t think much beyond five years. MTC’s Federally
mandated process is the exception, weak though it be. Where is the Master
Planner who can boldly explore a full array of development scenarios with different
housing types, such as high-rise along the Bay or along Santa Cruz Mountain
ridges? Where is the transport strategist looking at non-road ways to move
people around?
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Existing Caltrain is shown in blue. The green network is a
Trans.21 fantasy that would attract most road traffic |
Indeed
new modes of transport are available to shape growth and reduce auto dependency.
Trans.21 proposes extensive podcar networks inter-connecting scores of
the many places where people want to go. The overall service is so satisfying
that 25-50% of all travel will be attracted. That compares to transit’s share
of 3-5% today. Think of how podways will alleviate street and highway
congestion.
Savvy
citizens will ditch car ownership and save lots of money. With the right public
policies, these savings can be the base from which society can pay for pod
infrastructure.
The
accompanying map shows a hypothetical pod network in green. It includes several
hundred miles of guideway (some could be on existing, protected streets) and
several hundred stations. It would distribute from and feed into the several
existing Caltrain stations shown in blue. Ridership on it has grown recently. Pod
feeders would at least triple today’s ridership of 65,000 daily trips.
As
for the political reality of such a future, the MTC is not even thinking of
such a scenario. Its vision is more narrowing focuses on a recently announced $700
million project to electrify the 84km Caltrain line That’s just to replace
signaling! The MPO process tells us that this is a good investment that also
happens to enrich well-placed consultants and contractors.
Can
MPOs -- MTC and the many others spread across the US -- open up to podcar
futures?
