Dr. Enrique Peñalosa
“Building more roads to fix traffic is like throwing gas on fire.”
“Parking is not a constitutional right.”
“If an 8 year old can’t safely use a bikeway, then it is not a good bikeway.”
Today, BikeTexas (formerly Texas Bicycle Coalition) hosted a lunch time lecture by Dr. Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia with State Senator Wendy Davis, council candidate Chris Riley, staff from the City, TxDOT, Capital Metro, and CAMPO, and a who’s who of Austin bike activists as well as notorious road warrior Bob Skaggs in attendance.
Peñalosa is world reknowned for the work he did in Bogotá to create public space for its citizens, reduce crime, improve quality of life, and increase citizen participation. Despite being limited to one 3 year term as mayor, he brought water service to the entire city, built or restored 1200 parks, instituted the ciclovía, and built over 300 kilometers of bikeways. The last achievement has lead to an increase from 0% to 5%of the population biking for transportation in just 5 years.
While this was hosted by Bike Texas, Peñalosa’s lecture focused on more than just cycling. Instead, he talked about how city streets are built and how that leads or prevents happiness. In the field of urban planning, happiness is not something that comes up often, but it should. Peñalosa rightly pointed out that our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, includes the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. To that end, he believes that part of government’s role to to help us be happy.
“We should have cities where we are happy,” Peñalosa said. “Good cities are cities where people want to be outside. They include great public space, a space so great that even the rich can not avoid going.”
He listed a set of needs that people have to achieve this happiness in an urban setting. They include walking (with bicycling being a fast form of walking), being around people, contact with nature, having a place to play, and not feeling inferior. On most of these counts, our American cities are a failure.
“For the last 90 years, we have given all of our public space over to cars,” he continued. ” The 20th century is a disaster in urban planning.”
Peñalosa points out that much of what we do makes the car superior and people outside of cars second class citizens. The absence of sidewalks and bikeways, large highways, lack of public space all create an atmosphere that devalues humans over cars in his opinion.
“A protected bikeway shows a citizen on a $40 bike is as important as a person in a $40,000 car,” Peñalosa pointed out.
“It is shocking that we find it normal for children to live in terror of being killed by a car,” he continued. ”If an 8 year old can’t safely use a bikeway, then it is not a good bikeway.” To make streets safer for everyone, as mayor he instituted sidewalk intersections with streets at grade with the side walk forcing cars to slow down to cross this hump. In addition when faced with the need to connect a poor, immigrant community with the rest of the city, Peñalosa had a 20 mile dedicated pedestrian/bicycle way built leaving a highway to be built later. “I left the road building to my replacement. I knew if I didn’t build this, it would never get built.”
Formerly, this dirt path connected a poor community to Bógota. (Pardon the poor photo quality. This is a picture of a slide projection)
Now, a 20 mile dedicated pedestrian/bikeway connects the community
When it comes to traffic problems, Peñalosa’s recommendations run counter to conventional American planning. ”Building more roads to fix traffic is like throwing gas on fire,” he said indicating that you can never build enough roads to fulfill demand. “A traffic jam is an indicator of the need for more transit, not more roads.” He also believes that bikeways should not just be limited to parks and forests, but should run through urban areas.
In the end, he made the point that the way our streets are built and the way we address traffic is not an engineering question but a political one, one that makes a statement of our priorities and what we value. “We need to ask how we want to live” when making transportation decisions. “We don’t ask transportation engineers how we want to live.”
At 3 PM today at the BikeTexas office at 1904 E. 6th Street, there will be a bike ride with Dr. Peñalosa. There is no charge for the ride if you missed the luncheon and want to talk to this very engaging speaker.
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- A New Year, a new mindset ...
- The economics of bike boulevards: Debunking the myth that bike infrastructure will hurt business ...
- City council to vote on ciclovia resolution this Thursday ...
- New petition seeks to ban cars from Iowa Farm to Market Roads ...
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
It’s really easy to say things like this – it’s very HARD to stand up against those who denied it to us in the first place (2000 LRT plan would have had trains running by now in their own lanes on most of the #1 route). I was pretty much out there alone in 2004, as I recall; none of the folks at this luncheon dared raise their voice at all about the fact that passing commuter rail then doomed us to never getting rail on the #1 corridor.
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Mike,
I don’t think commuter rail dooms us in any way. Marcus and I were political consultants on the 2004 campaign, and while I agree with you that it was not the best first line to establish services with, it was easy to pass. The political reality is that I know of no community in recent times that refused to expand rail service once it was re-established (Dallas just keeps adding lines.) Capital Metro choose the path of least resistance to establish rail service. The current line is by no means my first choice for rail service (2000 would have been tons better for immediate ridership and renewed urban in-fill.) However, I expect it will be extremely popular and Austinities will want more which would pave the way for better lines (especially if the federal transportation authorization bill that passes this spring has more rail/transit focus as many believe it will have.)
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Elliott, have you ever read my blog? There are numerous fundamental practical reasons why building commuter rail means we will now never (for reasonable lengths of ‘never’) have reserved guideway transit service on the #1 bus route.
http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000558.html
Links from here are good jumping-off points.
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
#1 bus route north of the river, that is. South Congress could theoretically get reserved-guideway streetcar as part of an eventual extension to the initial CAMPO TWG plan, except it appears to be foundering.
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Mike,
Leave the creation of political will on this to the professionals.
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Elliott,
It’s not just political will – it’s the fact that the Feds won’t kick in for a project without very good bang-for-the-buck (which we now can’t get on the #1 route for a variety of reasons related to commuter rail). It’s the fact that nobody with any political instincts at all will support giving up automobile lanes on Guadalupe for a mere 10-15,000 riders per day (it was hard enough to get people on board when it was going to be the full 46,000 per day; you won’t get anywhere near that many riders when there’s a transfer involved). It’s the fact that Capital Metro has wasted a ton of energy and money on Rapid Bus (inertia which will be hard to overcome).
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
You’re right, Mike. We are all doomed. I think I’m just going to give up and go home and play Russian roulette.
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Nice. Way to make your point.
The only path forward is to get whole-heartedly behind the CAMPO TWG rail plan (which, again, appears to be foundering). This plan, at least, can get trains on Guadalupe in 20 years or so (if it turns out to be a raging success, we can build north up Guadalupe from it). I have said so on numerous occasions.
But in order to be effective at that task, one must understand precisely what we’ve already gotten ourselves into rather than mocking those who were right all along. Otherwise, we’ll waste our energy like Tri-Rail did, spending all our time double-tracking a rail line from nowhere to nowhere (see Note), rather than figuring out how to make the trains actually go _some_where.
You can’t get to (rail on Guadalupe) from (expand and extend commuter rail). It’s like trying to get to New York by first driving to El Paso. You, first, have to admit that you’re going the wrong direction, and turn around.
Note: This is not hypothetical. Capital Metro is actually trying to do this. One of their stimulus proposals is for the Feds to kick in money to double-track the Red Line, as if that somehow makes it magically go to UT or the Capitol or even most of downtown. And Capital Metro’s SECOND priority right now is the Green Line – a commuter line from Elgin to the Convention Center. Their third priority, apparently, is Rapid Bus, which should have a [sic] after the Rapid, since it’s completely useless.
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Mike,
I’m not mocking your point, I’m mocking your self important and defeatist attitude. I actually mostly agree with you, but you aren’t going to get anywhere telling people I told you so. And telling people we’ve screwed the pooch and will never get real mass transit ain’t exactly inspiring either. It is off putting and egotistical.
I don’t really give a crap who was wrong or right, let’s just do it right and leave the egos behind. This is what our community deserves from our leaders. (Yes, Mike, you are a leader.)
on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Using my favorite roadtrip analogy:
1. You don’t get the car to New York by insisting that, although we’re heading west on I-10 and approaching the outskirts of El Paso, that everything’s fine and we’re on target for New York – although we may need to go even farther west to get there.
2. You also don’t get the car to New York by letting the guy who read the map wrong the first time continue to think that he read it correctly and should therefore continue to navigate. You give the map to the guy who said you’re supposed to be going northeast rather than west.
3. You also don’t get that car to your destination by downplaying how far off course you went, or you might end up out of gas before you even get back to square one (Austin).
4. Finally, you don’t get your goal by telling the people you’re meeting in New York that you’re still on schedule, even though you’re now, at best, going to be two days late.
(1 = more investment in the Red Line, 2 = not identifying that commuter rail is the problem rather than the solution, 3 = not identifying that commuter rail prevents the 2000 LRT plan from being built, 4 = downplaying obstacles to getting rail on Guadalupe in the real world now that it can’t continue northwest along 2000 alignment).
on Jan 24th, 2009 at 11:32 am
[...] see extensive coverage of this event, which I found extremely inspiring, at Austin Bike Blog. (See: Part 1 and Part [...]