Part 1 in a series of articles exploring cities adopting DR’s covenants.
People often say that Dancing Rabbit is in the middle of nowhere, and it’s hard to dispute. Rutledge, our nearest town, has a population of 100 (which we hope to surpass in the next few years) and our whole county has fewer residents than some big city high schools (4,843 by the last census).
But what we do at Dancing Rabbit is as relevant to cities as it is to small town USA, and I’ve begun to wonder: what if cities adopted Dancing Rabbit’s ecological covenants?
These six Dancing Rabbit covenants are the foundation of our ecological expectations of residents and members. Our covenants are based in the belief that radical change is possible and that it will come both through personal choices and through major shifts in physical and social infrastructure. They are based in the understanding that conservation is key, and that only with reduced consumption can technological innovation meet our needs sustainably. We’ve found that cooperation is a powerful tool for conservation and we believe a shift towards more sharing is a big part of the social change we’ll need. Our covenants don’t describe every aspect of a sustainable society, but we’ve found that these few simple rules put us far along the path towards sustainability.
In this series of articles I’ll explore what it would look like for cities, neighborhoods, or regions to adopt DR’s covenants.
Our first (and perhaps most impactful) covenant states:
“Dancing Rabbit members will not use personal motorized vehicles, or store them on Dancing Rabbit property.”
What would happen if a major US city passed a law that personal motorized vehicles were not allowed or at least seriously curtailed their use? For example, what if New York prohibited personal motorized vehicles to drive or park on the island of Manhattan? Could that really work? Would people stand for it? Would the city suffer or flourish under such a law? What exceptions would have to be made?
People have written whole books about New York City transportation systems and I can’t possibly cover it all in that level of detail but here’s a quick look at the possibility.
A Car-free Times Square in New York City
The Details
While Dancing Rabbit’s covenant is worded simply, it required a lot of work to clarify the details of what constitutes a motorized vehicle. New York would have to do the same. At DR, anything powered by internal combustion and anything much bigger than a bike is a motorized vehicle. With some careful wording you could make sure to allow electric bikes and maybe scooters, as well as wheel chairs, Segways, or electric skateboards while still regulating electric cars and motorcycles.
What about through-traffic from New Jersey to outer boroughs, upstate New York, and Long Island? To address this, New York City could create a few corridors for people to travel across the island and such travelers would probably see a speed up with no local traffic to contend with (current average cross town speed – 5.2 mph).1 Of course, this was Robert Moses’ plan, in opposition to which modern, community-based urban design was born and which still inspires spirited controversy today. Some creative thinking would be required to find a way to allow corridors to exist without disrupting neighborhoods and the robust pedestrian network that makes Manhattan unique among American downtowns.
New York would also have to define what it means for a vehicle to be “personal”. The law should allow for police, fire, and ambulances, as well as various forms of public transit. Business delivery vehicles could be restricted to certain hours and areas to allow pedestrians and human powered vehicles free access. And what about the ubiquitous NYC taxi? Taxis would likely still be allowed and their use might even increase to meet the needs of the now carless residents and visitors to the city. People with certain disabilities might be able to get special vehicle permits if transit could not meet their needs.
New York might even plan for a system like the car co-op at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Our car co-op serves the needs of 60 people with only three vehicles. Companies like ZipCar, Mint, and Connect by Hertz could provide vehicles for short term use when a taxi or transit just won’t work, or for those taking a trip off the island. (Peer-to-peer carsharing is a non-starter when no-one has a private car.) To prevent an easy loophole (“This SUV? It’s my one-person carshare!”), New York would need a clear definition of a valid car co-op or carsharing program. A good litmus test might be a minimum member to car ratio, which could be set at 40 to 1, ZipCar’s current ratio.
If New York banned cars in Manhattan, more people would park in New Jersey and the outer boroughs and take mass transit from there. This would mean increasing the parking capacity at existing transit stations, as well as creating some new transit hubs with additional parking. New York could also provide parking at each bridge, tunnel, or ferry crossing, with taxi and transit service from these locations. New York’s current expansion of the ferry system would serve the car-free plan quite well.
The Benefits
What benefits would New York enjoy in such a scenario? At present, over 35 percent of the area of Manhattan is occupied by roads.2 One reason for this is because personal vehicles are a remarkably inefficient use of road area. Therefore, it’s likely that without private vehicles, road area could be reduced by 30-60% as street parking was removed and major roads narrowed. As most roads were turned over to pedestrians and bicycles, safety and convenience would increase for more ecologically sound forms of transit. Some existing road space could be converted to parks or gardens, allowing for urban agriculture and recreation. Other space could be used for commerce such as street vendors or outdoor seating for restaurants. New York City has been doing these things already, with over 250 miles of new bike lines (including protected lanes segregated from car traffic) installed since 2007,3 and new car-free pedestrian plazas at major intersections all over the city.
Transit ridership would jump, which would mean better service for everyone as buses, subways, and trains would come more frequently to meet the higher demand. Transit systems feeding NYC would also see an increase as many people would opt to take light rail to get into the city.
Air pollution would drop drastically, as “motor vehicles contribute approximately 11% of the local PM2.5 (fine particles) and 28% of the nitrogen oxide emissions” in New York City.4 It could be reduced even further if New York mandated that all taxis and car co-ops met high mileage standards, or were electrified. Buses could also be electrified (don’t get confused by the MTA’s current “hybrid-electric” bus fleet – that’s different) or use alternative fuels with lower pollution potential.
New York’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions footprint would also drop, since 18% of New York City’s GHG inventory is from on-road transportation.5 While only some of those vehicles are private cars in Manhattan, the effect would nevertheless be profound.
There would also be health benefits as more people would walk and bike – “New Yorkers residing in densely populated, pedestrian-friendly areas have significantly lower body mass index (BMI) levels compared to other New Yorkers.”6 Local businesses would benefit as well – a New York University study, in collaboration with Transportation Alternatives, found that protected bike lanes and select bus service in Manhattan’s East Village would increase spending at local businesses, despite fears that reducing parking would hurt sales.7
Overall, New Yorkers would see significant quality of life improvements with less noise, cleaner air, more outdoor space for kids to play, and better transit systems. Not only that, New Yorkers would have more money. According to the New York Times, “American families who are car-dependent spend 25 percent of their household income on their fleet of cars, compared with just 9 percent for transportation for those who live in walkable urban places.”8
Drawbacks
A huge change like this would require large infrastructure investments, so the obvious question is, how would these changes be funded?
Revenue would likely come from a variety of sources: transit fees, taxi medallions, parking fees, tolls for delivery vehicles, leasing newly vacated roadways, tolls on through traffic, and reduced cost for roads. Care would need to be taken to prevent any undue burden on any specific segment of the population.
One option is to transition towards banning cars by implementing some form of Congestion Pricing. This is a system adopted in some European cities (e.g. London, Stockholm, and Milan) that charges any vehicles to enter certain areas of the urban center, sometimes with rates calibrated by time of day or current congestion. Such a system was proposed for New York City a few years ago9 but, while widely popular with the majority of New Yorkers,10 did not pass the New York State legislature, a required step for implementation. Using such a system to transition to car-free areas could generate significant revenue from the vehicle surcharges (after accounting for lost income from moving violations and parking tickets) which could go towards the infrastructure improvements required for a car-free city. It would also allow for a smooth transition as areas of the city are designated for a surcharge, with a ban on cars following a few years later. These areas could expand at regular intervals to allow people and infrastructure to adapt.
There would also be significant cost avoidance in a car-free city, since “traffic costs the city nearly $30 billion a year due to losses in employee productivity, traffic accidents, air pollution, traffic noise and roadway damage.”1 Perhaps some of that $30 billion could make its way towards increasing the mass transit infrastructure.
Regardless of how improvements were funded, there would be some folks who would not appreciate the change. Those who make their living off of the car culture in the dense urban center and people who simply want to own and drive their own vehicle in the city might resent or resist the plan. This type of cultural change may always have its malcontents, but as with the pedestrian riots when new-fangled automobiles killed walkers in the 1920s, once the shift occurs, the new way of doing things quickly becomes “normal” and protests are few.
Other Cities
So what about cities besides New York, could they ban personal vehicles?
New Yorkers are not your average Americans. New York’s high density and robust transit system make it an ideal candidate for a car-free city, and over half of all NYC households don’t own a car. In Manhattan, that number is around 75% almost ten times as high as the national average of 8%.4 These exceptional characteristics make New York a natural place to start envisioning a car-free urban center. Nevertheless, could other cities consider banning personal vehicles?
It would certainly be harder in some of America’s sprawling metropolises like Houston or Phoenix, which would require a major infrastructure overhaul to allow for a switch away from private vehicles. But it’s not hard to imagine cities like San Francisco, Portland, Boston, Los Angeles, or Seattle banning private vehicles in major portions of their metro areas and then allowing those new areas to grow as the infrastructure and demographics shifted with the new system. While it would be harder for some cities than others, any place could make the shift if given the time for the infrastructure to change.
How Crazy an Idea is this?
There are already a number of car-free places in the world11 ranging from small towns and islands to small zones in urban centers. An experimental, mostly car-free suburb near Freiburg Germany. Car-free parks and weekly car-free days in major American cities. Pedestrian shopping centers. City centers in the developing world and the ancient world.
It is clear that car-free cities can be both possible and amazingly vibrant. I have no doubt that a move away from private cars will make our cities not just more sustainable but more livable and enjoyable for all. Hopefully our citizens and political leaders can take the brave step towards such a future soon.
This is part 1 in a series of articles exploring cities adopting DR’s covenants. In the next article we’ll explore eliminating fossil fuel for most significant uses.
Jacob Corvidae and Cecil Scheib also contributed to this article.
Footnotes
1 http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/traffic/
2 http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/goodman-cars.htm — An essay from 1961 on banning cars on Manhattan
3 http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/past-route-projects.shtml
4 http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/air/emissions_from_transportation.shtml
5 http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2011/pr331-11_report.pdf
6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_New_York_City
7 http://transalt.org/newsroom/media/4629
8 http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/carless-in-america/
9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_congestion_pricing
10 http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/schaller_paper_2010trb.pdf
11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_places
This series is a great idea! Thank you! will distribute and nag all my friends to read.
Though these ideas are very nice, it simply is not a practical idea in the real world to implement them. There are disabled, elderly, and other handicapped people to consider. Most people would want the revenue saved by these changes for other things needed, and would not tolerate using those saved funds for the projects described. Though Dancing Rabbit uses sound ways in most cases where cleaner systems and less consumption is concerned, it simply is not practical for the outside world to put those systems in place to use at this time in history. A man once said, everybody publicly admires the idealist, and hates him in private.
Tony,
Great idea for a series. I completely agree that the principles y’all are exploring at DR have wide applicability but making that link is not self-evident and needs to be directly made like you are doing here.
California is actively enacting legislation that moves us closer to the reality that you describe above. There is hope!
Thanks,
Brad
A couple of years ago I took a road trip with my two boys to Dancing Rabbit and stayed in the Milkweed Mercantile. To be able to go from Ames, Iowa, pick up my kids in Waterloo, and then visit the Chicago museum of Science and Industry, then spend a few days at dancing rabbit required a personal vehicle. There is no bus service or mass transportation that can match the cost-effectiveness of my vehicle which now has 220,000 miles on it. This is because I bought a quality vehicle, and because I have personal ownership of it, I take better care of it than would be possible in most any collective-ownership structure.
I’ve also got a personal convenant: to work and live in ways that produce more energy than I use. My first step towards that was to try running E-85 (ethanol) in my unmodified prius.. After some initial tests to see what ratio I could run, I have been filling up for the last 120,000 miles with about 5 gallons of E-85, and 4 gallons of regular gas. When I visited Dancing Rabbit, I also bought 20 pounds of sweet sorghum syrup from nearby Sand Hill Farm, and then I added water, fermented the syrup, and distilled about a gallon of 180 proof ethanol. Then, the ethanol went into my car. So I know I can grow sorghum, and make fuel that my car will run on… But it’s really expensive, over $20/gallon using Sand Hill Sorghum.
Last year I planted 68 acres of corn on rented land near the family farm in Iowa. From this land I got 180 bushels per acre, and when taken to a nearby industrial ethanol plant, that makes 540 gallons of ethanol, or enough to drive my car almost 20,000 miles per acre, which is about what I drive in a year. So that’s 1 acre for me, and 67 more acres for other vehicles. I sold my corn for between $6.00 and $6.50 per bushel, so that’s $2.00 to $2.16 per gallon for the corn. Add in processing at the ethanol plant, and that’s around $3 per gallon.
I guess my point here is that I think car-free cities or covenants are not the best solution, and have many negative side effects. Dancing Rabbit could not exist without diesel, coal, and gasoline, even with the covenants. Diesel fuels the delivery trucks, mass-transit busses, and even the cars in the Dancing Rabbit fuel co-op in winter. Coal powers the electric light rail here in Minneapolis, and diesel the Amtrak trains that bring people.
Because I have a personal vehicle, I can make the choice to run it on a renewable fuel, in which I know it’s renewable because I grew it myself. There must be personal vehicles so that some of us can show the managers of public transportation systems what is possible.
I would love to be able to set up an organic sorghum-ethanol and soybean biodiesel fuel station next to Dancing Rabbit. But the fuel is going to cost at least $5-$10 per gallon. Would the Rabbits be willing to pay that cost and convert to soyoil or alcohol stoves instead of depending on propane?
I think the real issue we should be discussing is not cars, but fuel cost, and awareness of where does the fuel actually come from.
New York City could easily solve the car problem by adding a $2.00 per gallon gas tax along with a $20 per day per vehicle road-use toll, which could be waived if you buy at least $20 of fuel covered by the fuel tax.
Hi Troy,
I applaud your ecological endeavors and they are a great model. Our next article will look at the fuel question so I won’t respond much to that point, but I do want to say that vehicles have more impact than just their fuel. For one 10% of their ecological impact is in their production, maintenance, and disposal. But even more important is their affect on the design of our cities, neighborhoods, and towns. Private vehicles lead to sprawling cities with suburbs eating up farmland and habitat. Public transit leads to compact cities and towns centered on transit hubs which leave more land available for nature, food production, and fuel production. Compact cities and mixed use neighborhoods help create more community as well.
Perhaps raising fuel prices would have the same result – more use of transit, more compact development, fewer private cars, and I would applaud any city having a high fuel tax or road fee. I would note that with high fuel costs people may not drive as much but might still keep their vehicles meaning cities would still need a lot of space for parking – a huge waste of valuable real estate. Perhaps some high cost for vehicle registration or parking could address that problem as well.
Tony
I would bet the automobile industry would hate to hear of ‘car-less’ places, and would be even more threatened if it got to be a popular thing that the masses would discover the simple joy in not owning an automobile and the heavy expenses of owning one. The amish around me don’t seem to feel the need for a car. I know of other people that have given up their oars, and have bought a horse and buggy, they are happier and claim to have more change in their pocket because of it. Owen Newman of Friedheim MO is one of these folks.
Being a life long resident of the ozarks, I too have heard people say that someone lives “in the middle of nowhere”. Personally, I find this to be a conceited and naive thing to say. Just where is exactly “nowhere”? And what are the standards for determining where is nowhere and were is somewhere? This seems to be something that city folk say. They don’t realize that the place they call ‘middle of nowhere’, is in fact home to somebody in the vicinity, and in deed is ‘somewhere’. It’s somewhere to anybody that ever lived there. It seems urbanites don’t have any respect for the ‘place’ or the native inhabitants, or their ancestors, the local history, and the hard daily toil it took to survive there. And urbanites have the nerve to wonder why “hicks” or “rednecks” , as they like to call us, aren’t as welcoming to them after hearing them say repeatedly ‘they are in the middle of nowhere’. It’s as silly as someone saying after a tornado or flood has done damage ‘it looks like a bomb went off’. Well I can tell you, most people i’ve heard say this have never been anywhere close to where a bomb went off. So why is it they feel need to say this, as if they have some expertise on the subject? Most anybody that has been around things that have exploded near them, like veterans, they usually don’t say this saying. They usually say something more like ‘this is a hell of a mess’, or ‘things really got blown to shit’. But I can safely attest to one thing , I don’t live in ‘the middle of nowhere’. I definitely live somewhere, I may not always wear underwear, but I know I live somewhere.
I know politicians bought and paid for by lobbyist for the corn grower associations in this country have tried to make a big deal about the importance of ethanol, but I don’t see the big advantage to it. Why you ask? Corn is hard on the land, it sucks a lot of nutrients to grow, it takes lots of nitrogen, nitrogen fertilizer kills off the earthworm population in the soil, without earthworms you will never have healthy soil for the future. Greed in higher corn prices is causing a lot of producers to plant corn without rotating crops, again, this is hard on the soil.
I think switchgrass has more advantages to it. You don’t need to fertilize it. In the tall grass prairie regions here in middle america, there are plenty of patches of switchgrass to be harvested.
To bad nobody has figured out how make fuel from fescue, Missouri alone could produce fuel for themselves.
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Great post Tony (and Cecil, and Jacob)! This dream is absolutely an achievable one. I can only hope folks in these and other cities will read this and make it happen!
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Or what if New York City didn’t ban personal vehicles per se, but just started narrowing roads, replacing pavement with more suitable, beautiful, an permeable walking surfaces, building robust bicycle networks, planting trees in the right-of-way, and allowing merchants to fill the streets with patio furniture, fruit stands, and small performance spaces? Driving your car would grow increasingly inconvenient at the same time walking and cycling became less perilous. You might end up with corridors that look like the Dutch Woonerf, or the old pedestrian malls in Copenhagen where cars are technically permitted, but they’re an afterthought, forced to compete with meandering foot traffic and cyclists.
So do you ban cars first and fill in the streets, or do you fill the in the streets first and let cars fade away? Planners face these chicken-and-egg dilemmas pretty frequently: If you’re trying to create a pedestrian-friendly downtown in an auto-oriented city, do you build a parking garage and then fill in the surface lots, or do you fill the surface lots first and then build a parking garage as demand increases? I think the later strategy makes sense. The City of Champaign decided on the former, so now we have a multi-million-dollar six story parking garage that is never filled PLUS the original surface lots and people still complain when they have to walk more than two blocks to their restaurant.
Tony (& Cecil & Jacob) Very well done!
I was impressed that you covered both sides & I look forward to the other 3 parts of the article. I will also fwd it to some friends. Regards, Stan
I gotta agree with Troy; throughout the vast swath of America, nearly all of our settlement patterns are based upon and dependent upon the automobile. Due to very basic cultural concepts about property and wealth flow, it’s very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Might be possible in very dense urban areas like NYC or SF. I’d support a return to the horse or camel for transport, but it’d be a tectonic shift in how society is currently structured. I applaud the efforts of DR on owning and walking a sustainable path. IMO, with oncoming climate change, 7 billion humans, and static or declining resource base of water, food and energy; it’s a bit of hubris to continue to assume that we will always be able to control, and implement in a leisurely fashion, the tectonic shifts towards a more sustainable path. In every instance that people discuss sustainability, they always avoid its darker twin ‘unsustainable’. Within a few generations, people might look back and wonder why, even as we hurtled towards a major climatic shift that is of greater magnitude than anything in recorded human history; we continued to cling to the uniquely American idea that we control our own destiny as a civilization. I guess the answer is, “because we want to”. Truly sustainable technology? Try a healthy band of humans, dogs, atlatl and woven baskets!
forgot to mention that I’ve spent the last 4 years of my career auditing greenhouse gas emissions throughout major industry sectors like electricity, telecom, food service, agriculture, waste management, water management, etc. Better than most, I understand the linkages between energy and modern day lifestyles. Tinkering around the edges isn’t likely to bring it ’round to sustainability anytime soon. I know this is pessimistic, but when you come to understand the scale, breadth and depth of modern energy infrastructure, it’s a level headed assessment.
I’m impressed, I must say. Rarely do I come across a blog that’s both educative and interesting,
and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head.
The issue is an issue that not enough men and women are speaking intelligently about.
I am very happy that I came across this in my search for something regarding this.