How COVID19 reshaped our cities overnight
Transcriber: shirin etebar
Reviewer: Chryssa Rapessi
When you think of most cities in the US,
images like this come to mind.
Little green space,
lots of fast moving cars,
bumper to bumper traffic
and humans, waiting at curbs
and crosswalks clearly outranked
by the automobile.
Since the dawn of car culture,
urban transportation planning has been
fixated on moving automobiles quickly.
Now, one third of all the land
in cities is set up for cars.
We add lanes to six lane highways.
We cut down trees to widen
to lane residential roads.
We pave over scarce open space
for surface parking.
Many car owners effectively pay double
to reserve up space at home and work.
Providing for cars was
a massive investment
and has provided us immeasurable
flexibility in how we travel.
But our dependence on them.
The costs, the noise, the pollution
have taken a toll on us.
We can now do better.
And, here is how,
I’ve been studying transportation
and environmental design for 25 years.
I’ve encouraged designers, engineers,
decision makers and the public to look
beyond our current car’s model.
But widespread change has
been slow to come.
And then covid-19 hit
and we went into lockdown.
Conventional rules that kept
the auto at the top of the heap
were ditched almost overnight.
We opened up our streets for people
walking in the middle of them.
We open them up for outdoor dining.
And those emerging techie modes
of getting around town,
this meant more room for regular bikes,
electric bikes and all forms of wheel
devices that are cleaner,
lighter and more convenient than cars.
Signs like this one up.
Scenes like this appeared using
street space to preserve physical
and mental health became an imperative.
Now, many cities have been trying their
hand at alternative street designs
For decades, these initiatives
gain some traction
and natural experiment was unfolding.
What happens when cars take
a backseat to people?
It propelled my colleague and me to start
studying these changes
in 55 of the largest cities in the US.
And what we found is thrilling.
The cities that are innovators in our
study are closer to finding solutions
to some of the most pressing and
challenging problems of our time,
like climate change, equity, safety.
Seattle was one of the first
to jump into action.
I was on their bicycle advisory board
20 years ago
with Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
For decades, they’ve dealt with
their crumbling auto infrastructure,
all those bridges and viaducts.
They long been striving to bring more
equitable access
to more people on the streets.
Shortly after the lockdown,
the city unfurled a 30 page playbook
to use their street space better.
A few weeks later, 26 miles of streets
were closed to through car traffic,
opening them up for people
on foot and bike.
The city chose these particular areas
because they were underserved by existing
pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure,
and they were in neighborhoods that were
experiencing more of the impact
from the pandemic, both from a health
perspective and an economic perspective.
A month later, the city mayor
of Seattle announced
the 20 miles of these streets were going
to be closed to cars permanently.
City engineers that are now working
with neighborhood groups,
volunteer based organizations like
Neighborhood Greenway’s
to bring together residents in designing
alternative visions for streets.
Over the summer, on the other
side of the country,
Pittsburgh rolled out a bike plus plan.
As the number of people opting
to block in bike exploded,
this plan enabled the city to slow down
car traffic on even more streets.
Now, Pittsburgh has a long standing
commitment to innovation,
and this bike plus plan helps usher
into the transportation system,
new innovative forms of mobility.
It might be that dusty Schwinn
hanging on the garage,
now refurbished with battery power,
a cargo bike or an electric
three wheeled variant of a bike
that provides more comfort, safety
or protection from the weather.
You see these types of modes.
They can serve mostly the same purpose
as cars, trucks, SUVs,
but they do so using a third
of the space to get around.
And these new modes, they can be great for
older people or those without a car
so that they can run errands
or visit friends.
You see, Pittsburgh is redesigning
their city streets now
to accommodate more of
these human-scale vehicles.
They’re doing so by dropping
the average speed limits
on select streets from
30 miles per hour to 20.
This 10 miles per hour difference in
the case of a crash can save lives.
And what we’re seeing is that they’re
redesigning 50 miles of streets
over the next two years to bring in
more welcoming environments
for bike plus type vehicles.
And, in so doing, they’re ensuring
that technological advances
meet the needs of humans and not cars.
Further, the bike plus plan
is helping the city
reduce transportation related
emissions 50 percent by 2030,
all while expanding affordable access
to jobs and destinations.
I’m excited to keep an eye on Pittsburgh
as they share lessons
for St. Transformation’s with
other cities moving forward.
We also looked at Austin, Texas,
a city always on the fastest
growing cities list.
Now, that growth can be good,
but the residents have felt the strain.
They, too, launched a healthy
streets program,
opening up select streets to
just walking and cycling.
Now, this action proved valuable in
helping residents realize and broaden
the benefit of their tax dollars that
typically pay to serve cars.
New designs were implemented
on South Congress,
the iconic main street of Texas
in downtown Austin.
We see in these historic photos how
the stretch of road has changed.
Character over time evolve with
advances in technology,
civic priorities or public preferences.
With city councils direction,
this stretch of road now has two
fewer lanes of car traffic.
A third of the street space was given over
to people bicycling and rolling
on scooters, taking them off the
busy sidewalks, better suited for dining
under the oak trees, and giving them
increased comfort and safety.
Austin residents recently
and overwhelmingly
approved more than seven billion dollars
in an unprecedented bond referendum,
a nice chunk of which is going to just
transform streets
for active mobility and safety.
Hundreds of low cost,
high impact projects are going to
help build out a new bicycle
and pedestrian infrastructure for
residents of all ages and abilities.
Seattle, Pittsburgh, Austin and
other leading communities,
they’ve all done the research.
More than half of all car trips
in urban and suburban areas
are less than four miles.
Think about a trip to the grocery store,
to the gym, or grab a bite to eat.
Unlike a few years ago, we now
have more mobility options
for these short hops to be easily
satisfied using vehicles
that are lighter, cleaner and greener.
Now, we didn’t need a pandemic
or 80 percent reduction in our local
economies to realize that our love affair
with cars has lost its luster,
but the public emergency
help spur quick change.
We can now build on this momentum
and push it further.
You see, covid-19 has
allowed us to time travel
to see what our cities
would be like in 10 years
when there’s other ways of
getting around town
and the car is not always king.
We’re past sitting indifferent
as multiton vehicles go hurling
by our homes at highway speed.
Cars are too big for these short trips.
We don’t need insulated hiking boots
to attend ballet class
within 20 minutes of where
most of us live.
That is, in our existing communities.
We already have the goods and services
that we access on a daily or weekly basis.
Streets are the single largest
physical asset in cities.
They are owned by the public and we can
get more out of them to achieve our goals.
But to do so, we need to
open up our aperture.
And look beyond having them
always be set up for cars.
Rethinking streets ramps up our climate
crisis plans nationwide,
it draws into focus how these
spaces are engines
for equity by adopting new formula
for how infrastructure resources can be
spent to increase accessibility for all.
And let’s not lose sight of another
public health crisis,
the number of people who die
in car crashes
equal to a Boeing 737 going down
every other day.
The city actions that have just described.
Document how streets can change
to accommodate emerging
cost effective solutions,
all while out without
sacrificing much comfort,
convenience or accessibility.
One hundred years ago, as cities were
grappling with issues of clean water
and safe housing, streets were handed
over to relatively narrow goal
of maximizing vehicular traffic flow.
Now, owing to technological, economic
and environmental change,
we hold in our hand the prospects
for a much brighter future.
And we know how to get there.
We’re in a once in a century situation
with the pandemic.
We have the public’s attention.
Repurposing streets by inviting smaller
vehicles into our lives
and deemphasizing cars is possible.
The evidence shows us that in the
long run we’ll save money, lives
and we’ll make our communities more
just and resilient. Thank you.