Roads and Bridges in a Post-peak Tompkins County
By Simon St.Laurent.
Roads and bridges support energy-consuming vehicles, and they also have tremendous energy costs for their creation and maintenance. Reducing these costs will likely happen on two levels: using maintenance approaches that require less energy and materials, and changing the nature of the roads and bridges to address different uses.
(Please note that this discussion focuses on the physical road and bridge infrastructure. Transit options could certainly accelerate and improve on some of these possibilities.)
A Possible Scenario
After increasing energy costs led to reduced traffic and higher costs for road maintenance, municipalities changed their handling of roads, highways, and bridges. While the county's road network remains largely in place, following the same general pattern it has kept since the early 1800's, road maintenance adjusted to reflect less use and fewer people living in isolated areas.
Lower speed limits allow the use of simpler roads in the countryside, with only a few main arteries preserved as expensive but important transportation corridors. Rural residents expect disruptions from weather, and prepare for it rather than expecting clean roads within a few hours of a snowfall. Many roads are managed as a single paved lane, often with gravel rather than asphalt, though a wider path is drained so that vehicles can pass each when they meet.
In the cities, villages, and hamlets, reduced traffic and greater emphasis on pedestrians and bicycles led to a shift in street design. Again, some key streets are kept wide for use as arteries (largely by restricting parking along them), but all streets have widened sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and a narrower area for cars, parked or driving. Winter maintenance focuses on keeping the city a pleasant place for pedestrians to walk.
Making the Adjustment
Municipalities won't reach that final scenario easily. The transition from today's broad asphalt roads oriented strongly toward cars will be slow, responding to changing costs and priorities.
Short term: Respond to increasing costs
- Reduced plowing, salting
- Triage for road repair
- Shifting to rural single-lane paved, dirt roads
- Reduced speed limits, load limits
Long term: Adjust infrastructure for different usage
- Reduced road and bridge systems
- Plowing only on key road systems
- Shifting to different (less energy-intensive) materials for paved roads, like brick and crushed gravel. Focus on drainage and managed plantings to reduce mud
- Greater emphasis on lighter-weight pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure
- Reorganization of state/county/municipal responsibility
- Consider property taxes on cars to cover road costs
Increased oil prices will have two major impacts on Tompkins County roads and bridges. First, increased gasoline prices will likely reduce the amount of traffic, even allowing for innovations like electric vehicles powered by renewable sources. Second, the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure will rise substantially. Asphalt, tar, and oil are all petroleum-based, and construction and repair of roadways is extremely energy-intensive. Machinery costs are also tied in large part to energy costs.
Much of the current road network reflects patterns that were laid down in the early 1800s, and only paved slowly. A few roads, notably Route 13 between Lansing and downtown Ithaca, are complete innovations, blasted into the landscape. (Even old 13 from Ithaca to Cortland wasn't paved until 1910.)
Specific options for change
- City streets
Restructure with pedestrian and bicycle emphasis along European urban models, as shown in Figure 1. Consider approaches which minimize parking space, possibly areas where cars only enter by special permit. Creative use necessary for parking lots - redevelopment, or markets? Plow sidewalks, not roads, except possibly main roads, probably based on current state highways.
- Rural roads
Reduce the paved road network, as paving and plowing hundreds of miles of roads for a few users (who simultaneously have to pay a lot for fuel!) is an expensive luxury. Reduce the form factor of roads that remain, as shown in Figure 2. (Some wider paved areas to ease cars passing each other might be necessary, especially in areas with poor drainage.) State highways might make sense as branches in a light rail network. Consider possible interurban opportunities with surrounding cities. Plant fruit trees and bushes along rights of way to provide source of food, reduce snowdrifts. Add trail networks. Acknowledge Cortland, Elmira, Binghamton, and Auburn as important centers to connect with roads.
- Shared vehicles
Car sharing is already under consideration in the City of Ithaca, and the Village of Dryden has long allowed residents to use its DPW truck for their own work during off-hours and weekends. In general, shift resources from strictly private vehicles to shared ones.
- Alternative vehicles
Motorcycles, horses, carts, snowmobiles, scooters, sleighs, and multi-purpose vehicles will likely find more common usage.
- Snow removal
Snow removal uses tremendous amounts of fuel and materials, and actually makes some modes of transportation (sleighs, skis, and snowmobiles) more difficult to use. It also damages roads over time. Plowing priorities should shift to reflect changing usage, with emphasis on the most heavily-traveled roads and on busy sidewalks. (The Village of Dryden already plows sidewalks to some extent, for example.)
- Nodal development complementing roads
Return to 19th century model of central city, countryside with villages, hamlets, farmhouses. Where possible, use existing developments outside of that pattern as possible bases for intensive agriculture, using existing road system. (Because Route 13 moved, there are likely at least three new nodes to add to earlier patterns: at Route 13 and Triphammer Road, Route 13 and Warren Road, and the overlap between Routes 13 and 366.)
Figure 1 - From left, guardrail, pedestrian sidewalk, bicycle sidewalk, parking, street.
Figure 2 - A rural road in Northern Germany, one lane wide but drained for two.
Due at least partially to the fact that the comments mechanism was
broken while this article was out for public review, the only
comments received upon first publication were ones posted to the
Sustainable Tompkins list. They have been gathered here for
future reference.
Jon
==================================================================
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:59:18 -0400
To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv
From: Thomas Shelley
Subject: [SustainableTompkins] Question re roads, was Hybrid parade
Dear George and Friends--For a different option on the future of
roads see Simon St.Laurent's article on roads on the TC Local site
at http://www.tclocal.org/. Your comments on Simon's article are
welcome as well. Take care. Tom
At 06:10 AM 3/24/2008 -0700, you wrote:
>Depending on type of surface and level of maintenance rural roads in New
>York and Pennsylvania can cost anywhere from around $15,000 per mile to
>$30,000 per mile annually to maintain.
>
> George Frantz
>
>Joshua Dolan wrote:
> in all these conversations about hybrids I have rarely
>ever seen any discussion about the cost and energy to
>keep the roads maintained. Lets look at the whole
>picture!
>
>Josh
==================================================================
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 12:43:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: George Frantz
To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv
Subject: Re: [SustainableTompkins] Question re roads, was Hybrid parade
Tom,
I definitely agree with what Simon wrote in the TCLocal piece.
I grew up learing to drive on dirt roads and just got back from a
week in New Orleans and the Guld Coast of Mississippi, where most
of the residential streets are 18-22 feet wide curb to curb (when
they have curbs). In fact if you get off the interstates and
other main highways throughout the south and the west you will
find that there road network is much less "developed" than the
state and local systems of New York.
In fact if you simply leave Tompkins County you can find that
local roads are not as wide, straight of smooth as those in much
of Tompkins County.
People out there seem get along fine with what they have, and seem
to pay a lot less taxes as well.
Amongst the 90 percent or so of my ideas that have been rejected
was a return to the use of parkways to move auto traffic around
Ithaca at 30-40 MPH. they would essential be 22-24 ft. wide
roadways carrying two-way traffic, located within 100-160
rights-of-ways that would provide noise and visual buffers between
traffic and adjacent reidential areas, and create room for
bikeways tahtw ould not be immediately adjecent to high speed
traffic.
Nodal development certainly is agreat idea, although the article
leaves the definition of "nodal development" to the imagination.
But then again so does a lot of the planning literature I read.
I'm also only batting .400 in my efforts to get local
municipalities to adopt zoning regulations that permit higher
residential densities and mixed-use development as a means of
channeling growth to better protect open space and make more
efficient use of existing infrastructure, including streets and
roads.
As for myself I have a pretty definitive definition of nodal
development: compact communities with populations densities in the
range of 20,000 persons per square mile or about 12 residential
units per acrea. By comparison the overall population density of
Ithaca NY (city only) is about 5,500 persons per square mile and
the residential unit density of Fall Creek only 7-7.5 dwellings
per acre. Of course the numbers are much lower and even more
disastrous from the standpoint of sustainbility outside the city
itself.
Already had one of my planning class take a look at the positive
impact of sustainable urban planning for Ithaca. Simply replacing
the predominant single-family detached residential development
pattern with one dominated by the simple two-three-story
residential townhouse architecture resulted in the 11-plus square
miles of the Ithaca urban area (City of Ithaca, Town of Ithaca,
Village of Cayuga Heights, Village of Lansing) being condensed
into an area of between 2.5 and 3 square miles bounded on the
north by Cayuga Lake, Stewart Park and Fall Creek Gorge, on the
east by Judd Falls Road and Collegetown, on the south by Six Mile
Creek, and on the west by the Flood Control Channel and Cass Park.
It included everything you see in Ithaca and its surrounding
suburbs, including Cornell, Ithaca College and the 7 million-plus
square feet of big-box. malls andother reatil development that
exists.
Not only did 7 to 8 square miles of sprawl become agricultural
lands or forest land, and not only did residents suddenly live
within a 10-20 minute walk to ANYWHERE, including shopping, work,
schools and the urban/rural edge, but the exercise also wiped out
the need for between 200 and 250 miles worth of streets and roads.
Imagine how many miles of roads in Tompkins County beyond the
Ithaca urban area could disappear if people would start placing
the environment before lifestyle choices and move back to the
ciities and villages.
Best regards.
George
==================================================================
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:28:17 -0400
From: "Simon St.Laurent"
To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv
Subject: [SustainableTompkins] "Nodal Development" - was Question re roads,
was Hybrid parade
George Frantz wrote:
> Nodal development certainly is agreat idea, although the article
> leaves the definition of "nodal development" to the
> imagination. But then again so does a lot of the planning
> literature I read.
>
> I'm also only batting .400 in my efforts to get local
> municipalities to adopt zoning regulations that permit higher
> residential densities and mixed-use development as a means of
> channeling growth to better protect open space and make more
> efficient use of existing infrastructure, including streets
> and roads.
>
> As for myself I have a pretty definitive definition of nodal
> development: compact communities with populations densities in
> the range of 20,000 persons per square mile or about 12
> residential units per acrea. By comparison the overall
> population density of Ithaca NY (city only) is about 5,500
> persons per square mile and the residential unit density of
> Fall Creek only 7-7.5 dwellings per acre. Of course the
> numbers are much lower and even more disastrous from the
> standpoint of sustainbility outside the city itself.
You're right that nodal development is here (as is usually the
case) defined vaguely. In this case, that's a consequence of the
way we divided up categories, with this article attempting to
focus primarily on roads and transportation infrastructure. These
subjects are all tied together, of course, and not very separable,
but some days that's the best we can do.
In contemplating a world where peak oil has come to pass, I can't
say I'm comfortable specifying units/acre or even human density.
I suspect that all of the variables will be different. My best
guess is that cities will be vastly denser, while the countryside
returns to more or less the historic patterns that served before
the automobile, with villages and hamlets that largely supported
the agricultural communities around them.
The one place in Tompkins County where I think that pattern will
change, as I noted in the article, is along new Route 13 from
about Ithaca High School to the junction with 366 by the NYSEG
building. That's a whole new road blasted out of the hillside,
and I expect the intersections along it to continue as/grow as
nodes.
Outside of the cities, villages, and historic hamlets, plus the
Route 13 nodes, the main question I hope people can answer is
whether their house will work as a farmhouse. If it will, then
they're probably okay where they are. If they're not, they have a
lot of thinking to do, hopefully followed by some action.
My own house qualifies as a "maybe" - it's walkably close to the
13/366 overlap that's starting to emerge as a hamletish node, and
if I can manage to buy some land on the hillside behind me, I
might be able to properly think of it as a farmhouse too. It
wasn't built that way, though - it's classic 1920's countryside
living on 3/4 of an acre on a rural highway, complete with a Model
T-sized garage. At this point it's on the edge of save-able -
we'll see.
One other point, which I'll be writing about in more of a
Dryden-specific context. I don't think telling people they need
nodal development works AT ALL, even if you appeal to their better
selves. My personal guess is that nodal development will happen
on a large scale when the alternatives are visibly too expensive.
Can we do things to move that direction? Sure.
Can we say it should happen and see it happen? Not unless we
control the price of gasoline.
We'll see - I'm mildly optimistic today.
Thanks,
Simon