On February 3rd the nationally syndicated, Wisconsin Public Radio program “To the Best of our Knowledge” devoted the second hour of their program to the question of sprawl.

Listen here, or download the free podcast via iTunes.

While at first I was intrigued by the show’s blurb (’Sprawl is bad’–Right?), by the end of the interviews and discussions I was thoroughly disappointed at the way in which the pro-sprawl guest (Robert Bruegmann) was allowed to make unsupportable and questionable claims about the minimal impact of contemporary suburban development, in part by vapid historical generalizations that eschew the particularity of the problem with expanding the growth of suburbs today.  To read an excellent, critical review of a previous Bruegmann public appearence in October 2006, see this post at Streetsblog.

Below is a copy of the email I sent to Jim Fleming, director of the show:

Dear Mr. Fleming,

A friend recently forwarded me a link to your show on sprawl. I was
excited by the idea of a show that considered some arguments contrary
to the typical polemics against the suburbs. I tuned in hoping for a
debate about and a nuanced look at the environmental, health,
aesthetic, and social impacts of the suburbs on American life. Joel
Hirschhorn raises a number of important, often subtle critiques of the
suburbs, though he is clearly not the best spokesperson for new
urbanism and higher-density living–at times on your show, and I
imagine in his book, he speaks as if here were a conspiracy theorist.

Surprisingly though, it is Robert Bruegmann, a highly-trained academic
historian and theorist whose statements on your show were the most
obfuscatory and specious. I was embarrassed while listening to the
show that Professor Bruegmann was able to make statements about how
people simply prefer to live in the suburbs, that commutes are no
longer than they were before, that living in the suburbs is cheaper,
and other such claims without having to answer to any basic and simple
challenges to these ideas–for instance, what of Hirschhorn’s idea
that supply more than demand drives the housing market in America?
What of the environmental and personal health detriments of even just
a 30 minute commute by freeway to work each day?

The most embarrassing thing about this particular show was the highly
self-indulgent and uncritical discussion with Tom Perotta that ended
it.

Your show seemed to be finely tuned to gratify a suburban audience
familiar with the social and environmental drawbacks of suburban
living yet thirsting for affirmation of their choice; only those
hungry for such an affirmation could possibly have been convinced by
overarching and flimsy moral of this particular show: ‘The suburbs
are not really all that bad; it is just said that they are because a
certain, elite minority finds the aesthetics of living in such places
uninspiring and ugly–they are proselytizers and a bit fascist.’ This
is the same form of argument anti-environmental conservatives use
against the advocates and scientists attempting to stem the tide of
global warming.

This is a clip from The Flight of the Conchords, a show that stars two New Zealanders Bret and Jemaine who live in Brooklyn and ride ten speeds. Think of this as a different take on the Scraper Bikes video. (The plot from which this clip is excerpted is that the fruitstand owner is discriminating against the guys because they are kiwis, and won’t sell Bret a red-delicious apple).

I like to watch this after my rides and when too many *ucking cars have  been *ucking with my ride and right-of-way shit.

 

 

Whenever we ride over a sharrow (or ’shared lane marking’), we like to think that we’re hitting one of those video-game-like power booster sites—our speedometer jumps from a lazy 11.5 mph to 21 mph and we shift into a lower gear. Which raises the interesting question—do others also experience anything like this existential state of ‘being-in-the-sharrow’?

More acceptable to the Effective Cycling crowd than ’separated-from-the-flow-of-traffic’ bike lanes, the sharrow’s origin as a signifier of a previously practiced, yet un-inscribed lane position for cyclists, is relatively recent. Sharrows indicate to cyclists where they should ride in the street (a prescribed distance away from the door-span of parked vehicles) and help inform motorists of a cyclist’s right to be in the lane, and not pressed up against side-mirrors when the former ‘need’ to roar past only to find themselves stopped at the next, inevitable red light.

Pittsburgh, PA, that old steel town at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Mon so dear to our hearts just got its first stretch of sharrows along Liberty Avenue between Bloomfield and the Strip District, a major success for the burgeoning Pittsburgh Bike Coalition, BikePgh! We know that sharrows improve car and bike road-sharing from both empirical observation and anecdotal testimony—but what do they mean to you? In SF, in Pittsburgh, in Flagstaff, in Portland? Tell us what you think in the comments, and we’ll incorporate your thoughts into a more substantial reflection on these icons of our right-to-be, soon.

There are a lot of cars in Marin county.

Resistant to both  suburban development of its former argricultural lands as well as to BART or a passenger rail system similar to Caltrain, the socially-liberal Marininites seem to be driving pretty much everywhere, all the time—taking the kids to school, piling onto the 101, driving in ur city, spoilin’ ur rides. A phalanx of transit groups, community advocates, and cycling organizations are working on a few notable dents in this iron-and-carbon leviathan of the North(bay)–from plans to discourage car travel on Conzelman road in the Marin headlands to a recent grant for a Marin Safe Routes to Schools (sans autos) program. Yet one can not live on hope alone, and the meager accomplishments of today in terms of all that needs to be done to reshape our transport infrastructure often feel like a pinch of Udder Creme when what we really need is a full smattering of three squeeze bottles of the shit.

In the meantime there are a few places in Marin where we can still get away from the RAV4s, Durangos, and ubiquitous Land Cruisers out for a single-occupant car trip to one of those small Safeways to buy two tins of Fancy Feast. The best is without compare the stretch of Fairfax-Bolinas road between Fairfax and, of course, Bolinas.

We road this stretch of county road that lies mostly within the Mt. Tamalpais Watershed District (and therefore free of housing or other kinds of development) this weekend as part of ‘The Alpine Dam Loop,’ one of the most popular road rides in Marin.

The road has a few steep sections, and does require quite a bit of climbing to get out of Fairfax before hitting the scenic descent to Alpine Lake (if you continue past the lake you’ll also face a tough two mile climb up the intersection with Ridgecrest Road and the south trailhead for the Bolinas Ridge trail).

Ride this road on a weekday and your chances of encountering even one motorist is low, and the number of drivers barely increases on the weekends. And unlike the popular twisting roads of some rides in the Santa Cruz Mountains (much closer to that den of honest, family-type sport bike and crotch rocket riders, San Jose), we see very few if any motorcyclists on this stretch.

by bike:
SF–>Fairfax, CA: 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours depending on your commute skills.
Fairfax–>Ridgecrest Blvd (about 10 miles), 1 hour to 2 hours depending on your climbing and descendng skillz.  Then a quick descent down the other side of Bolinas Ridge, and into BOlinas (if you can find it).

If you have thoughts on traffic and/or anti-traffic in Marin, we’d like to hear what you think–this blog post is pretty much the sum total of what we know about said topic.