Carmageddon was the feared massive traffic tie-up expected in Southern California when the 405 Freeway had to close down for the July 16-17 weekend. Guess what? No traffic problems. People stayed home. (Experts who have studied the phenomenon of induced traffic were probably not surprised.) The Los Angeles Times has a wrap-up here: “ ‘Carmageddon’s’ good karma.” (Link thanks to Planetizen.com). And Planetizen’s own Tim Halbur weighed in, noting that the whole episode illustrated the folly of depending too much on one transportation mode alone – automobiles.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, credited with coining the term “Carmageddon,” dubbed what happened “Carmaheaven.” The New York Times’ Timothy Egan called the whole weekend an “urban epiphany.” His description: “No, the big lessons of Carmageddon are not about transportation. They are about something else, something less easily quantified. They are about the small salves in life that make a day easier, or even memorable. When millions of Angelenos decided to hold a block party, or go to the park, or ride a bike, or play soccer, or spend half a day at the farmers market, or take advantage of free admission at some museums, they found a city far removed from that awful commuter stress index.”
And along those lines, this article, “Livable cities don’t have freeways,” refers to a Brown University study that found a city’s population can decrease 18 percent because of the building of a major highway. (See this interview with Brown’s Nathaniel Baum-Snow.) That’s one of the ways, notes conservative economist Edward Glaeser, that the government has disproportionately subsidized suburban sprawl.
Back to the Future? UNC Charlotte urban design Professor David Walters has a piece on the website of the UNCC Urban Institute (disclosure: that’s my new employer) looking at how, despite admirable progress in many ways, many of the development problems facing the Charlotte region in the 1990s are still with us. Maybe, Walters suggests, he’ll start kicking up a fuss again and bring on more of that 1990s’-style hate mail.