Kunstler Continues to Push Peak Oil Issues

James Howard Kunstler, author of now-classic books, The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere is pushing the peak oil issue on his blog which is known as Clusterfuck Nation.

Kunstler’s entry from today addresses the foolish thinking that hybrids will allow us to continue our auto-dominated society:

Kunstler’s latest book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, is on my reading list. From what I’ve read from the blog so far Kunstler is highly pessimistic about the future. Although maybe he is simply being realistic?

First up is home heating costs for this winter. It will be a serious issue and tragically we’ll have stories here in St. Louis of people dying because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes. But high natural gas prices will lead to higher electricity costs. Both will mean higher costs of goods and services. Can you say recession?

As a region we simply cannot continue subsidizing sprawl. All the experts predict the number of cars and auto congestion will continue to increase. I disagree. Within 20 years our auto ownership and traffic congestion will be less than, or equal, to today.

Yet our political leadership is moving ahead on massive auto subsidizing projects while more sustainable transportation projects take a back seat. The rebuilding of I-64 (highway farty to natives) and a new Mississippi River Bridge are just two examples.

Based on cost estimates to build two miles of street car lines connecting the Loop to Forest Park you can get about fives times as much coverage with street cars over light rail. For a cool billion dollars we can get a new bridge, the proposed Northside & Southside MetroLink extensions or 4-5 times as many street car lines covering much of the city. Currently the bridge is the highest priority. It should be the last priority.

The claim is we need the bridge and auto capacity to grow our economy. This, of course, assumes the cheap gas auto economy we’ve been used to. My feeling is we need to shift away from subsidizing the dead-end auto “experiment” and build a first-class mass transit system. Reactionaries will attempt to read into my views that I want to ban all cars from St. Louis but that is not the case. I want to shift the balance back to a sustainable means of moving people from place to place. That is walking, biking, and street cars.

Twenty years from now large McMansions in Chesterfield will be vacated like homes of Lafayette Square were thirty years ago. The difference will be that the vinyl clad boxes in suburbia will not be worth saving. Transit will be the key and the wealthier will move closer to mass transit and the poor will be left on the fringes struggling to get to jobs. Bedroom communities will be the hardest hit and will become the new ghettos. At least the poor can now get on a bus (or several buses) and get to the jobs. In the future we’ll finally have mass transit for the wealthier in the core and the poor will be on the edge with substandard service as they try to get back into the core for work. The new Mississippi River Bridge will be little comfort.

Man, I’m as pessimistic as Kunstler!

So what do we do? Again, I think we need to move now to connect as much of the city to mass transit as possible. But if my prediction of the wealthier moving to the core you are correct to wonder won’t this just serve the wealthy in the future? Well, yes and no. My thought is if we plan a network of streetcars to connect the city and inner-ring suburbs we can build denser neighborhoods around transit that accommodate all income levels. Waiting until the crisis point and we’ll see the affluent get transit and the poor get the shaft. If you don’t believe this can happen just turn on CNN for continuing coverage on Katrina.

Unfortunately we will probably ignore the warning signs and come into this crisis as unprepared as we were for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Major sprawl projects like the bridge and rebuilding of I-64 will be started or at least “funded” when the experts finally realize we need to support dense neighborhoods and mass transit rather than continue to subsidize private autos. Despite all logic against continuing these massive and misguided projects they will go forth simply to create needed jobs.

Enough of my rant because the Daily Show with Jon Stewart is about to start…

– Steve

Mayor Slay Supports New Bridge But Doesn’t Justify Why

I’ve written about the proposed new Mississippi River Bridge a couple of times. First on January 3, 2005 and earlier this month on August 2, 2005. Add this to the list.

Over the weekend the “from the mayor’s desk” included a brief item on the new Mississippi River Bridge. Surprise: The Mayor Supports the massive project! But I take issue with some of the logic the Mayor uses to support the bridge. Lets take a look at all of the text from his website:

True enough. Bridges and highways have enabled people to continue to operate single occupancy vehicles and build sprawl far away from the core. At the same time the core has suffered from lack of proper support for other means of transportation including walking, bicycling, buses, light rail and bringing back street cars. Lots to ponder, let’s see how the mayor responds.

Oh I see, political answer. Restate the question so you know you’ve been heard and then give the answer you want to give that really doesn’t address the main issues.

After reading this paragraph I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn’t 1950. St. Louis and most other U.S. cities have been doing just that — making it easier to get in and out of downtowns for about 60 years now. Where has that put us? We have highways we can’t afford to maintain. We have massively wide roadways that are not friendly to walk beside much less cross. We have countless acres devoted to parking. We have more bridges now than when the population of the city was nearly 3 times great than it is now.

Downtown is important to the city and region. But to think we need to continually make it easier for auto drivers to get in and out is short sided. They’ll tell you it is good long range planning because of projections for commuting times in the year 2025. This, of course, assumes we will continue to build sprawl further and further and and that gas is plentiful and cheap. At what point do we begin spending money, real money, on making our downtown and other neighborhoods where people want to flock to rather than just come in briefly for work, dinner, a show, a game and then flee across a new bridge?

I’ll agree that I don’t like all the development activity happing so far west in extreme St. Louis County and in St. Charles County. I’d like to see the city be more in the middle which does mean a balance of development in metro East.

But what about development in Southern Illinois. From what I’ve seen it is building sprawl as much as St. Charles County. We’ve got MetroLink out to Scott Air Force Base but I don’t see good examples of Transit Oriented Development (aka TOD) happening along the various stops. Instead we have big park and ride lots and sprawling suburbs in between. Sure building sprawl to the East of downtown St. Louis will balance things out with us more in the center but is that the best our region can do.

“Anything that grows our region’s economy will be good for the City, too.” Really? Is that certain? Who is to say this growth wouldn’t come at the expense of the City? Seems like a lot of assumptions are being made.

Notice the subtle message here: If you oppose the bridge you are trying to make it more difficult to leave the core and harder to live in the ‘burbs.” This is a common strategy — to paint any opposition as having an unreasonable position.

I completely agree with the first two sentences: we need to give people reasons to come here and we need to set ourselves apart. Unfortunately every other city is also thinking the same thing. What are the reasons to come to St. Louis? Are they neighborhoods, diversity, higher education, tolerance, cultural institutions and so on? Probably so. But saying we need a bridge to make it easier to get here is just laughable. To me the bridge still hasn’t been justified.

The real issue is people — not cars. Yet billions of dollars are being spent subsidizing private auto transportation. Billions! All in the name of progress. History clearly shows us the making it easier by car logic simply doesn’t work. The most desirable places to be are those that make it easier to be a pedestrian than a driver.

The best thing that we could do to grown and improve our city is to stop the bridge now and speed up the process of rebuilding internal connections. Remove highways by turning them into lower capacity boulevards. Put back the street grid in many places where it has been cut off by “progress” of highways. Scrap plans for a costly Northside and Southside MetroLink line and instead build many more miles of street cars serving greater portions of the city.

We must decide if we are going to continue with the 1950s auto-centric urban renewal way of thinking or are we going to recognize the mistakes of the past and truly look forward. This is a critical time in St. Louis and I don’t think the political or business “leadership” understands what needs to be done.

What do you think?

– Steve

‘Sunday Morning’ Showcased Century/Old Post Office Issue

This mornings CBS News ‘Sunday Morning’ showcased preservation battles in three cities, New York, a Chicago suburb and here in St. Louis.

I like that CBS showed the National Trust for Historic Preservation advertisement about trying to save a school from being torn down for a parking garage. The same National Trust has done a 180 and now finds it acceptable to sacrifice one historic building for another. They need to change their name to the National Trust for Every Other Historic Preservation.

Among the many points that couldn’t be made in such a segment is parking could have been built on the vacant lot on the North side of the Old Post Office. Yes, three sides of the Old Post Office had spectacular original buildings while the fourth side had already lost its historic structure and now serves as a surface parking lot.

Another key point is the historic Century could have been modified to to serve as a parking garage. Thats right, if parking was so critical to the success of the Old Post Office why not place it in an existing building? The simple answer is the developers would have made less money from development fees and other development incentives!

Part of the picture is that for decades we’ve been alterting our downtown, city and region in the name of progress — read: the car. Streets have been widened. Buildings razed for parking. Lots of buildings gone for lots of parking. Leaders in other cities have learned from their similar mistakes and begun the process of mending. But not in St. Louis. Our “leaders” are decidedly old-school.

Parking is still king in downtown St. Louis. The city still bends over to take whatever the suburban monied set wants to do downtown. Oh they’ll brag about all the new downtown loft residents, of which there are many, but when it comes to setting a vision for an urban and walkable downtown the residents take a back seat. We need change at city hall — top to bottom. Elected, appointed and staff. We need to start over.

– Steve

Is the City of Sunset Hills Violating Missouri Sunshine Laws?

I received the following notice via email today:

The Sunset Hills Board of Aldermen called a special meeting today to consider giving Novus Corporation an extra 20 million in TIF funds in addition to the 42 million it has already voted. This meeting is in direct violation of the Missouri Sunshine Law and the Attorney General’s office should be notified. It was posted yesterday afternoon which is not in in accord with the Law. All those throughout the metro area are encouraged to come at 4:00PM to the Sunset Hills Municipal Building at 3939 S. Lindbergh. The announcement can be found on Page 14 of today’s Post-Dispatch.

The applicable section of the Sunshine Law is ” 610.020 #2″ related to notice of meetings. “Notice …shall be given at least 24 hours ,exclusive of weekends and holidays when the facility is closed, prior to the commencement of any meeting of a governmental body unless for good cause such notice is impossible or impractical….”

What municipalities won’t do for big developers…

– Steve

Work Has Stopped on Downtown Parking Garage

Word on the street is that work has come to a halt on the parking garage for the Old Post Office Project. This is the site where the Century Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was razed last year despite pleas from preservationists and downtown residents.

Developer Steve Stogel was seen this week yelling at someone on the site where work has stopped. Could the stoppage somehow be payback for the bad Karma created from tearing down a historic structure and then suing two residents that tried, legally, to question the process?

– Steve