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Sustainability curricula: the transit (and Brooklyn) connection

Dr. Cameron GordonJohn J. Marchi Visiting Scholar in Public Policy

City University of New York – College of Staten Island – Philosophy, Economics and Political Science Department

Center for the Study of Staten Island

Senior Lecturer in Banking and FinanceUniversity of Canberra (Australia)

Faculty of Business and Government

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A note on data and mapsData and maps for this presentation (unless otherwise noted) were produced by the High Performance Computing Center (HPC) at the College of Staten Island – City University of New York

Weblink: http://www.csi.cuny.edu/cunyhpc/

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Sustainability: three pillars• There are many

templates of sustainability.

• Most share the concept of ‘three pillars’ that support a sustainable world: the social, the economic, and the environmental.

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Sustainability Studies

• Sustainability is by definition cross- and inter-disciplinary.

• In an undergraduate curriculum this can be manifested in at least two ways:

• -- courses in different disciplines • -- topics that cut across disciplines.

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Transportation as a key course• Any degree in sustainability studies should have to have

something on transportation--public vs. private. • There would have to be at least one course in

transportation and maybe one course devoted to public transit because that is very vital to urban sustainability. 

• One of the ways in which students could study this issue would be to look closely at public transit in this borough. 

• One would think that Brooklyn is well covered, but that is not the universal case.

• This lack of coverage is common in modern cities and has a large impact on the sustainability of urban transport systems and the overall impact of transport usage on community and environmental sustainability.

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• Here’s a particularly interesting set of maps from New York City DOT.

• Here the gaps in the city subway, the regional commuter rail network and buses are made clear.

• Because the system was built out over 50 years ago there has been an increasing mismatch between transit facilities and current human settlement and activity.

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• Here’s another way of showing this: the ‘center or population’ or ‘geocenter’ per borough.• If you could somehow place all the population on a flat plane with each person possessing an equal weight and space but distributed in different areas, the ‘geocenter’ shows where that plane would balance.•As population spreads out so does the geocenter.•Look at where these centers are – very far out – often far from transit.

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* Here is a crude measure which compares share of buses and bus-routes in Brooklyn relative to its share of the population of the City.* Brooklyn seems relatively under-served by this measure. It’s population share would suggest that it should have greater local bus service share.

ANALYSIS     BUS ROUTES 2002

           

County Population % total Local % total

Express % total

Buses % total

Route % total

    Routes   Routes       Miles  Brooklyn 2,488,194 31% 54 26% 5 13% 1393 31% 520 25%     NYC Total 8,084,316 100% 207 100% 38 100

%4566100% 2109100%

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* Here are the subway stops and route-miles by share of total in Brooklyn (remembering its 31% share of citywide population).* Here Brooklyn appears to be well ’subwayed’ at least in terms of share of route-miles and number of stops.* History is important here: Brooklyn, being an older borough, has more dense population centers than some ‘newer’ growth boroughs such as Queens and Staten Island, and also got a lot of the early subway infrastructure.

MTA Subway Routes and StopsDecember 30th, 2008

Subway Route Miles

% total Subway Stops

% total

Brooklyn 1.210744 29% 185 34%Total 4.129092 100% 539 100%

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•Mismatch between population and transit infrastructure has impacts on human behavior.* Because Brooklyn has the subway, its residents are ten times as likely to use mass transit as the rest of the US.* And Brooklynites drive to work at a rate of less than one-third the rest of the US but…* They are three times more likely to drive than Manhattanites and their mass transit and overall average commute time is worse than both those in Manhattan and the US in general.

PERCENTAGE MODAL SHARE – TRIPS TO WORKUSA Brooklyn Manhattan

Drove Alone 73.2% 22.5% 7.6%Carpool 13.4% 8.8% 3.4%Public Transit 5.3% 58.0% 59.6%Bike or Walk 4.3% 8.6% 22.8%Motorcycle or other

0.9% 0.5% 0.8%

Work at home 3.0% 1.6% 5.8%

Average Commute

25.5 43.2 30.5

Mass Transit Commute

47.7 51.8 34.4

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The Human Web of Action and Impact

• Transportation – in this particular case mass transit in Brooklyn – therefore has several important sustainability dimensions.

• There is modal choice – high footprint modes like passenger auto or low footprint modes like transit.

• There is land-use – “transit oriented development” or low density sprawl.

• There is future growth – managing it sustainably through sound infrastructure investment and associated planning or ignoring the issue entirely.

• There is technology – clean cars and efficient mass transit vehicles versus dirty and inefficient modes.

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Development and travel mode

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If you build it, they may come…unfortunately

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Transit availability and energy use

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The fairness dimension• Increasingly studied also is the ‘fairness’ of

transportation.• Poorer and more disadvantaged people tend to

have longer commutes, less access to transit and pay a larger share of their total income for transport.

• Below are some illustrative figures for Brooklyn (2000 US Census, graphic by )

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Map prepared by Pratt Center (op cit.)

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Fairness and sustainability• There is an important link between equity in

public services (and in this case transport) and public finance (in this case fares, tolls, and taxes) AND sustainability.

• Systems that deliver disproportionate benefit to advantaged groups at disproportionate cost to disadvantaged groups cannot be said to be sustainable.

• There must be a focus on social equity for both ongoing political support and because sustainable systems must have widespread participation by the general populace to work.

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• Here is a map of the amount of toll revenues collected from people in different zip codes.

• Darker colors indicate greater burdens.

• Staten Island and Brooklyn are especially hard hit.

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Conclusion• Transportation systems are going to be an

important part of any sustainability studies program, both as individual courses (which can have different focuses, e.g. technological, economic, planning etc.) and as components of individual courses.

• Transportation itself has important sustainability impacts and transportation serves as a foundation for making – or breaking – sustainable economic/social/environmental human settlements.