***Highway Disads***

Urban Sprawl Disad

1NC – Highways Bad: Urban Sprawl

Federal provisions to counter urban sprawl increasing now but highway construction erases recent gains

Lindsay, ’10 (Greg, freelance writer, 5/21/10, http://www.fastcompany.com/1650533/the-end-of-sprawl-obama-administration-to-take-new-urbanism-mainstream, )

"It's time the federal government stopped encouraging sprawl," Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan declared this morning before the Congress for the New Urbanism. He'd announced moments before that the department would fund $3 billion worth of projects this year alone, and they'd henceforth use "location efficiency" (based on transportation access, residential density, and so on) to score grant applications. They'll also use the criteria of LEED-ND, the brainchild of CNU, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the National Resources Defense Council, Donovan said. It was launched last month to apply the green principles of LEED to urban development. It could turn out to be the first step in a sea change about how the federal government approaches urbanism, which in turn could lead to the end of sprawl. Or, to paraphrase Nixon, we are all New Urbanists now. The implications go beyond funding for public housing. Last year, HUD joined the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency in creating the Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an effort to think holistically about housing, transportation, and quality of life when awarding tens of billions of dollars in federal funds. It is an article of faith among advocates for sustainable development that the notion Americans want sprawl is a pernicious myth. Sprawl isn't a function of market forces but the outcome of federal policies dating back to at least the 1950s. "For decades," Donovan said, "the government encouraged sprawl" with freeway construction and a "housing finance system that perpetuated the 'drive until you qualify' myth. "We learned from the housing crisis that home ownership is not for everyone," he said, but "transportation patterns can push families over the edge. The average family spends half their household budget on housing and transportation -- they have become the two biggest expenditures. Lenders bought into the "drive to qualify" myth as well, not accounting for the costs to buy into these [exurban] areas. Families found themselves driving dozens of miles to work, to buy groceries, to move theaters, spending nearly as much to fill their gas tanks as to pay for their mortgages, in some cases even more." "This is not about the federal government telling communities what they need to look like -- we tried that before," he added, alluding to the disastrous "urban renewal" policies of the 1960s. "This is people voting with their feet, as they want to move to communities with more transportation options. The President understands this, and place is clearly part of this discussion in a way it hasn't been before." The New Urbanists understood this before anyone else, he told them. "Our challenge is to bring that holistic view into the mainstream," and to "take it to scale." That includes $100 million in sustainable development grants for cities, another $40 million grant targeted at local communities, and "TIGER II," $600 million in competitive transportation grants that follows last year's $1.5 billion for TIGER I. All of those grants, Donovan said, had been jointly review with DOT and the EPA as partnership, a first. One grant to be approved this way was $25 million for light rail along Woodward Avenue in Detroit. DOT approved the grant after HUD brought to its attention redevelopment that was planned for the route, and the EPA highlighted brownfields that could potentially be recycled into affordable housing. In the long run, however, ending sprawl (assuming the Obama administration is indeed committed to this plan) will require more than federal grants. It will take convincing lenders that New Urbanism is worth it. As I've written before, Wall Street is willing to finance sprawl because it's easy to calculate the risks involved in making some place look like every place else. That's why HUD is also spending $10 million to create metrics calculating the "true combined cost of housing and transportation in a way that underwriters could lend to," Donovan said. In effect, HUD wants to define, in hard numbers, what the holistic qualities of New Urbanism are worth, so home owners might borrow against it the way they once did against their McMansions. "Because of the FHA's important, and because we can change our policies, we can help drive the market in the right way."

Sprawl directly increases US emissions, causes warming

Frumkin ‘1 (Howard, M.D., Dr.P.H. Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, “Urban Sprawl and Public Health”, Public Health Reports; Volume 117, )

Sprawl occurs in the context of two closely related phenomena: urbanization more generally, and population growth. In considering the health effects of sprawl—one particular form of urban growth—it is important to distinguish sprawl from these related phenomena. Page 5 The direct effects of automobile reliance: One of the cardinal features of sprawl is driving, reflecting a well established close relationship between lower density development and more automobile travel. 13,14,15,16,17 For example, in the Atlanta metropolitan area, one of the nation’s leading examples of sprawl, the average person drives 35.1 miles each day 18 —an average that includes the entire population, with both drivers and non-drivers. Denser cities have far lower per capita daily driving figures: 16.7 for Philadelphia, 19.7 for Chicago, 21.1 for San Francisco. 19 Within metro areas, the same pattern is observed. Figure 1 shows that in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, vehicle miles traveled increase as neighborhood density decreases. Automobile use offers extraordinary personal mobility and independence. However, it is also associated with health hazards, including air pollution, motor vehicle crashes, and pedestrian injuries and fatalities. Air pollution: Motor vehicles are a leading source of air pollution. 20 Even with automobile and truck engines that have become far cleaner in recent decades, the sheer quantity of vehicle miles driven results in large releases of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and hydrocarbons into the air. 21,22 NOx and hydrocarbons, in the presence of sunlight, form ozone. Nationwide, “mobile sources,” mostly cars and trucks, account for approximately 30 per cent of NOx and 30 per cent of hydrocarbon emissions. 23 However, in automobile-dependent metropolitan areas, this proportion may increase substantially. In the ten-county metropolitan Atlanta area, for example, on-road cars and trucks account for 58 per cent of NOx emissions and 47 per cent of hydrocarbon emissions, figures that underestimate the full impact of vehicle traffic since they exclude emissions from related sources such as fuel storage facilities and filling stations. 24 In various combinations, these pollutants, especially NOx, hydrocarbons, ozone, and particulate matter, account for a substantial part of the air pollution burden of American cities. Of note, the highest air pollution levels in a metropolitan area may occur not at the point of formation, but downwind, due to regional transport. Thus, air pollution is a problem not only alongside roadways (or other sources), but also on the scale of entire regions. The health hazards of air pollution are well known. 25 Ozone is an airways irritant. Higher ozone levels are associated with more respiratory symptoms, worse lung function, more emergency room visits and hospitalizations, more medication use, and more absenteeism from school and work. While healthy people may demonstrate these effects, people with asthma and other respiratory diseases are especially susceptible. Particulate matter is associated with many of the same respiratory effects, and in addition, with increased mortality. 27,28,29 Those who are especially susceptible include the elderly, the very young, and those with underlying cardiopulmonary disease. Page 7 An additional driving-related emission is carbon dioxide, the end-product of burning fossil fuels such as gasoline. Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas, accounting for approximately 80 per cent of global warming potential (GWP) weighted emissions. 30 Motor vehicles are also a major source of other greenhouse gases, including methane, oxides of nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds. Automobile traffic is a major contributing to global climate change, comprising approximately 26 per cent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. During the decade of the 1990s, greenhouse gases from mobile sources increased 18 per cent, primarily a reflection of more vehicle miles traveled. Global climate change, in turn, is expected to threaten human health a number of ways, including the direct effects of heat, aggravation of some air pollutants, and increased prevalence of some infectious diseases. 31,32,33,34 The link between sprawl and respiratory health, then, is as follows: sprawl is associated with high levels of driving, driving contributes to air pollution, and air pollution causes morbidity and mortality. In heavily automobile-dependent cities, air pollution can rise to hazardous levels, and driving can account for a majority of the emissions. While ongoing research is exploring the pathophysiology of air pollution exposure and related issues, there are also important research questions that revolve around prevention. Technical issues include such challenges as the development of low-emission vehicles and other clean technologies. Policy research needs to identify the best approaches to land use and transportation, to minimize the need for motor vehicle travel. And behavioral research needs to identify factors that motivate people to choose less polluting travel behaviors, such as walking, carpooling, or purchasing more efficient vehicles.

It’s anthropogenic and risks extinction

DEIBEL ‘7 (Terry L. Deibel, professor of IR at National War College, Foreign Affairs Strategy, “Conclusion: American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today Anthropogenic – caused by CO2”)

Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature, which, though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of global warming to the stability of the climate upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not one of more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming is occurring. “In legitimate scientific circles,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert, “it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming.” Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel predicts “brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century”; climate change could “literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps and aid the spread of cholera and malaria”; “glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster than expected, and…worldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago”; “rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes”; “NASA scientists have concluded from direct temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second”; “Earth’s warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year” as disease spreads; “widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidad…killed broad swaths of corals” due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. “The world is slowly disintegrating,” concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. “They call it climate change…but we just call it breaking up.” From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serous the effects will be. As the newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction, and threatened inundation of low-lying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolina’s outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures, took place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that “humankind’s continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is akin to playing Russian roulette with the earth’s climate and humanity’s life support system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, “we’re just going to burn everything up; we’re going to het the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then everything will collapse.” During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries but possible end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War era’s equivalent of nuclear winter at least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers form terrorism and traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threat not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet.

Link – Highways Increase Sprawl

Highway legislation is the largest contributor to sprawl

Emerson, ‘8 (Chad D, Associate Professor of Law, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, Spring 2008, “ALL SPRAWLED OUT: HOW THE FEDERAL REGULATORY SYSTEM HAS DRIVEN UNSUSTAINABLE GROWTH NAME”, 75 Tenn. L. Rev. 411, Lexis, )

IV. The Federal Transportation Laws that Facilitated Sprawl

Similarly to the tax laws that induced sprawl, federal transportation policy has also instigated unsustainable growth patterns. n165 Indeed, federal transportation laws have been one of the largest regulatory drivers of sprawl. n166 [*431] The federal government has cemented a system of sprawl through its road-building legislation and federal gas tax regulations.

A. How Federal Road Building Laws Have Induced Sprawl Unlike fixed rail transportation, non-fixed rail transportation-primarily motor vehicles-provides a traveler with much more flexibility. n167 When traveling by train, travelers are subject to the train's schedule and fixed destinations, whereas travelers by motor vehicle can basically elect to travel whenever and wherever they choose. n168 As motor vehicles became more widely available in the early twentieth century, the federal government unsurprisingly supported this enhanced flexibility by beginning to enact laws and regulations that promoted, and in some cases even subsidized, a massive expansion of non-fixed rail infrastructure in the United States. One of the biggest elements of the non-fixed rail infrastructure is the federal road system, which is composed of the federal interstate system and other federal highways. n169 Each year, the federal government spends tens of billions of dollars on road construction in this system. n170 Yet road building has not always been a federal function. In fact, the debate about whether the federal government should expend monies for road-building involved some of the nation's most influential leaders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. n171 For example, as his final presidential act, Madison vetoed a bill that would have essentially empowered federal road-building: I am not unaware of the great importance of roads . . . and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not [sic] be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction [*432] and a reliance on insufficient precedents; . . . I have no option but to withhold my signature from it . . . . n172 During the 1800s and early 1900s, local governments remained primarily responsible for the construction of vehicular thoroughfares. n173 When considering adoption of the nation's first highway bill in 1916, Congress noted that "[p]rimarily[,] roads are local concerns and jurisdiction over them belongs to the States and local authorities. This jurisdiction should never be disturbed by the General Government." n174 Despite the early opposition to federal funding, the prevailing view soon became that Congress did indeed have the power to fund road-building. n175 As manufacturers began to mass-produce motor vehicles in the early 1900s, there was a gradual shift from fixed rail as the primary form of transportation toward a greater emphasis on motor vehicles. n176 With this shift, a need developed for a more extensive thoroughfare network that could handle the increased traffic. n177 The federal government thus created "subsidies mak[ing] it cheaper for people to live further from where they work[ed], shop[ped], and engage[d] in other activities, which spur[red] development on the fringes of existing communities and necessitate[d] increased driving distances and frequency." n178 One commentator has noted the staggering extent of these subsidies: "$ 257 billion annually in tax subsidies for automobile use and fuel, an average of $ 2,000 for each taxpayer." n179 The following sections demonstrate how we reached this point by analyzing several concrete examples of federal regulations that have contributed to the proliferation of American sprawl.

1. The Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916 As arguably the first federal transportation law to adopt an anti-city slant, the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916 n180 played an important role in the facilitation [*433] of sprawl growth patterns in this country. n181 Resulting from a series of policy resolutions that originated with the first American Road Congress, the 1916 Act incorporated several provisions that laid the groundwork for unsustainable growth patterns. n182 The 1916 Act used a decidedly anti-urban funding formula, including limiting federal aid to $ 10,000 per mile. n183 While this provision may not appear anti-urban on its face, its effect was to enable more rural road expenditures, since land was cheaper in rural areas than urban ones. n184 Similarly, the Act only permitted federal road aid grants in towns with populations greater than 2,500 residents if the average distance between houses was more than 200 feet. n185 This limitation essentially prohibited road monies from being spent in densely populated urban areas. n186 Furthermore, the Act used a funding formula that determined how much money should be allocated to an area by analyzing its population, overall area, and existing road mileage. n187 The theory behind the formula would seem to be that areas with more roads would need more money for maintenance. Inexplicably, however, urban streets were entirely excluded when making this calculation. n188 Urban areas thus received significantly less funding despite having more roads used by more citizens. n189 Each of these provisions of the 1916 Act set the tone for decades of federal spending on rural highways, which facilitated massive suburban and exurban growth while simultaneously providing only minimal funding to urban street networks and alternative forms of transit.

2. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1921 Five years later, Congress revisited the issue of federal highway funding when it passed the Federal Highway Act of 1921. n190 The 1921 Act classified "federal-aid highways" as either "primary" interstate routes or "secondary" [*434] intercounty routes. n191 The Act apportioned sixty percent of federal funding to primary routes and forty percent to secondary routes. n192 Significantly, the Act failed to allocate any of the funding to intra-urban, or city, streets. n193 The urban inequity of this approach has been characterized as "a system of transfer payments, from urbanized regions to rural regions, and from all taxpayers to those who drove automobiles." n194 In effect, the benefits of the extensive federal road funds were realized by only a small segment of the overall population. n195 This disparity was evidenced by the fact that, as of 1921, "users of the [nine] million motor vehicles in the nation paid only twelve percent of all highway costs." n196 Thus, the 1921 Act, coupled with the 1916 Act, further entrenched a federal road policy that prioritized rural roads over urban ones, often to the point of excluding urban streets from all federal funding. "The original 1916 and 1921 highway legislation [was] explicit in rendering all roads in urban areas ineligible for federal aid." n197 As the federal government continued to devalue urban areas, sprawl flourished into the suburban and exurban areas.

3. The Federal-Aid Highway Acts of 1934 and 1944 The anti-urban approach toward federal road funding continued into the 1930s and 1940s, albeit differently than in past decades. While the 1916 and 1921 Acts almost completely barred urban road funding, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1934 n198 and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 n199 did not include such an express prohibition. n200 Instead, the federal government assigned the primary responsibility for allocating federal road funds to state highway departments. n201 The 1934 Act represented an incremental improvement, but still did not require states to allocate federal road funds to urban projects. n202 The 1944 Act did establish a minimum threshold for urban road funding, but the percentage remained much lower than that for non-urban areas. n203 Of the available $ 1.5 [*435] billion in total federal road funds, the 1944 Act allocated only twenty-five percent to urban areas. n204 Yet the amount of funding available for urban areas was deceiving; that money was allocated to highways that happened to cut through urban areas, instead of to enhancements of the city street network itself. n205 Worse still, the 1944 Act's definition of "urban" included any city with over 5,000 residents. n206 The Act's overly broad definition served to further dilute the total urban allocation by forcing major metropolitan areas to share funds with small towns of only several thousand residents. n207 Thus, while the 1934 and 1944 highway acts permitted states to use federal road funds in urban areas, the acts nevertheless continued to foster sprawl by broadly defining define urban areas and by apportioning a significantly smaller amount of the overall federal funds to those areas.

4. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 n208 is argued to have facilitated more prolific sprawl than any other federal transportation law. n209 By initiating plans for a 41,000-mile national interstate highway network, the Act created a system whereby single-vehicle usage took priority over mass transit in terms of both scope and funding. n210 "'More than any other single measure, the 1956 Act created the decentralized, automobile- dependent metropolis we know today.'" n211 The 1956 Act had its effect primarily through the Highway Trust Fund, a mechanism created by sister legislation to the Act. n212 The fund, formally [*436] established as part of Hale Boggs's Highway Revenue Act of 1956, n213 served as a depository for revenues resulting from a series of taxes designed to fund the massive interstate highway system. n214 The receipts from the taxes were to be deposited into the fund and redistributed as federal road funding. n215 Even though the fund was supported by a variety of federal user fees, the Hale Boggs Act prohibited those monies from being used on non-highway construction projects, like mass transit. n216 By passing these two acts, the federal government consummated its "explicit objective . . . to make highway transportation as close to free as possible." n217 In fact, the highways are far from free; automobile use as a whole costs "every man, woman and child in America over four thousand dollars per year." n218

5. How Subsequent Highway Acts Have Failed to Effectively Confront Sprawl Fortunately, Congress eventually recognized the unsustainable effects of federal transportation regulations and began to take some preliminary steps toward addressing the problem. n219 In 1991, Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), which provided, "It is the policy of the United States to develop a National Intermodal Transportation System that is economically efficient and environmentally sound, provides the foundation for the Nation to compete in the global economy, and will move people and goods in an energy efficient manner." n220 The ISTEA amended prior transportation legislation by allowing some federal transportation funds that had previously been restricted to highway construction to now also be used for alternative transportation options. n221 The ISTEA was reauthorized in 1998 by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), n222 which actually required that certain levels of [*437] federal transportation monies be allocated to non-automobile transit projects. n223 The ISTEA and TEA-21 certainly did not level the playing field, but they did represent a shift in transportation policy away from more than seventy-five years of sprawl-conducive regulations by allowing federal monies to be spent on the construction of mass transit projects such as light rail and buses. n224 Still, when considered as a whole, federal transportation funding remains a key driver in the spread of unsustainable land development patterns in this country. n225 In fact, the idea that the ISTEA and TEA-21 legislation effectively confront sprawl is quite inaccurate. For instance, Kansas City, Missouri is a metropolitan area that maintains the most highway miles per capita in the country. n226 Yet under TEA-21, "[t]he disparity in Kansas City between highway spending and transit spending equal[ed] almost $ 600 million." n227 In overall dollars, the legislation favored highway funding over transit funding by a five to one margin. n228 In truth, TEA-21 does little more than pay lip service to the ideal of promoting transit alternatives. When coupled with federal gas tax policies, one can see that the overall effect of federal transportation laws remains extremely sprawl-oriented.

Highway projects increase migration away from cities – causes urban sprawl

Knaap 2k (Gerrit, Department of Urban and Regional Planning University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Government Policy and Urban Sprawl”, http://dnr.state.il.us/orep/pfc/balancedgrowth/pdfs/government.pdf, )

Transportation Policy. The influence of the federal government on urban development patterns via transportation policies and programs is less ambiguous, though the magnitude of influence and direction of causation remains in dispute. The federal government is a major underwriter of and direct participant in the construction of interstate and other highways. Highways increase accessibility. Increased accessibility decreases the advantages of central city location both for residents and firms, encouraging both to migrate towards suburban locations. Recent studies raise doubts, however, about whether highways follow suburbanization or whether suburbanization follows highway construction (See, Urban Transportation Center 1998 and Center for Neighborhood Technology 1998 for opposing points of view). This question of causation may never be fully resolved, but the cumulative results are indisputable. Other influential actions of the federal government are also indisputable: it spends less on public transit than it does on highways, it taxes gasoline much less than other nations, and it spends considerable sums to maintain the flow of oil from middle east. In part as a result of these federal policies, automobile drivers in the United States pay about 73 to 88 percent of the cost of automobile use. If non-monetary costs, such as air pollution are included, the percent of cost paid by automobile users falls to 53 to 69 percent (OTA 1995). Without doubt this is a major factor in the decentralization of U.S. cities.

Uniquely erases the positive gains of housing policies and guarantees sprawl

Goodwin, ‘9 (Ron, professor at Houston Community College, currently enrolled in a PhD program focusing on urban planning and the historical development of cities, 1/19/9, “Urban Renewal and Highway Legislations: The Deconstruction of America’s Urban Core” http://ron-goodwin.suite101.com/urban-renewal-and-highway-legislations-a90803#ixzz1u6plcTtL, )

After witnessing the efficiency with which the German army mobilized throughout Europe during World War II, President Dwight Eisenhower encouraged the development of a similar network of roadways throughout the United States. The Federal Highway Act of 1959 introduced a network of roadways that would connect every major city in the country and became known as the Interstate Highway System. There is no question that this complex roadway network continues to provide mobility for millions of Americans daily. However, the locations of these new roads often passed through and intersected minority communities in the urban core. The effect was disastrous. Again, using the power of eminent domain, state departments of transportation acquired land and disrupted the lives of millions in the name of progress and development. Too many communities were bisected by freeways which often resulted in the isolation of some neighborhoods from previously attainable goods and services. Not only did these new freeways contribute to the unattractiveness of urban (minority) communities, they also facilitated urban sprawl by linking suburban housing with urban employment. Even though the Housing Act of 1949 and the Federal Highway Act of 1959 had their origins in the paternalism of the New Deal, the effects upon poor, specifically minority, communities left a legacy of want and despair. Admittedly, the Housing Act of 1949 revitalized many regions, urban and suburban, across the country. Likewise, the Federal Highway Act of 1959 provided the needed mobility vial to the economic sustainability of our country. The efficient movement of goods, services, and people that we currently enjoy would not be possible with the interstate highways. However, for all their apparent good, both pieces of legislation had a dark side; one that minority communities know all too well. They witnessed the destruction of once vibrant minority communities while new suburban neighborhoods flourished.

Impact – Environmental Justice

Sprawl disproportionately impacts lower class urban populations with the negative effects of environmental destruction – undermines VTL

Frumkin ‘1 (Howard, M.D., Dr.P.H. Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, “Urban Sprawl and Public Health”, Public Health Reports; Volume 117, )

Environmental Justice Considerations Research over the last 15 years has suggested that poor people and members of minority groups are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards. 141,142,143 Could any adverse health consequences of sprawl disproportionately affect these same populations? In general, the pattern of urban development of which sprawl is a part may deprive the poor of economic opportunity. When jobs, stores, good schools, and other resources migrate outward from the core city, poverty is concentrated in the neighborhoods that are left behind. 144,145,146,147,148 A full discussion of the impact of urban poverty on health is beyond the scope of this paper, but a large literature explores this relationship. 149,150,151,152,153 To the extent that sprawl aggravates poverty, at least for selected groups of people, it may contribute to the burden of disease and mortality. More specifically, there is evidence that several of the specific health threats discussed above affect minority populations disproportionately. Air pollution is one example. Poor people and people of color are disproportionately impacted by air pollution for at least two reasons: disproportionate exposure, and higher prevalence of underlying diseases that increase susceptibility. Members of minority groups are relatively more exposed to air pollutants than whites, independent of income and urbanization. 154,155 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data show that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to live in air pollution nonattainment areas (Figure 4). And as asthma continues to increase, asthma prevalence and mortality remain higher in minority group members than in whites. 156 The cumulative Page 23 prevalence of asthma is 122 per 1000 in blacks and 104 per 1000 in whites, and asthma mortality is approximately three times higher in blacks than in whites. 157 Similarly, asthma prevalence is more than tree times higher among Puerto Rican children than among non-Hispanic children. 158 Among Medicaid patients, black children are 93% more likely, and Latino children 34% more likely, than white children to have multiple hospitalizations for asthma. 159 While some of this excess is related to poverty, the excess persists after controlling for income. 160 Asthma prevalence and mortality are especially high, and rising, in inner cities, where minority populations are concentrated. 161,162 Both exposure to air pollution, and susceptibility to its effects, appear to be concentrated disproportionately among the poor and persons of color. Heat-related morbidity and mortality also disproportionately affect poor people and members of minority groups. In the 1995 Chicago heat wave, blacks had a 50 per cent higher heat-related mortality rate than whites. 163 Similar findings have emerged following heat waves in Texas, 164 Memphis, 165 St. Louis, and Kansas City, 166 and in nationwide statistics. 167 Of special interest in the context of urban sprawl, one heat wave study considered transportation as a risk factor, and found that poor access to transportation, a correlate of poverty and non-white race, 168 was associated with a 70 per cent increase in the rate of heat-related death. 169 Are minority populations disproportionately affected by lack of physical activity and its health consequences? People of color are more likely to be overweight, 170,171 and more likely to lead sedentary lifestyles, 172,173 than white people. 174,175,176,177 In the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-III), for example, 40 per cent of Mexican-Americans and 35 per cent of blacks reported no leisure time physical activity, compared to 18 per cent of Page 24 whites. 178 In this same survey, the mean body mass index was 29.2 among blacks, 28.6 among Mexican-Americans, and 26.3 among whites. 179 However, the relationships among race, social class, the environment, diet, physical activity, and body weight are complex. There is no evidence that sprawl disproportionately affects people of color with regard to exercise. In fact, it is possible that poorer people are less likely to own cars, and are therefore more likely to walk. Further data on these relationships are needed. There are significant racial differences in motor vehicle fatality rates. Results from the National Health Interview Survey revealed motor vehicle fatality rates (per 100,000 person-years) of 32.5 among black men, 10.2 among Hispanic men, and 19.5 among white men. Among women, the rates were 11.6 (blacks), 9.1 (Hispanics), and 8.5 (whites). Much of this difference was apparently attributable to social class differences; 180 variations in automobile quality, road quality, and behavioral factors may also help explain these differences. Pedestrian fatalities disproportionately affect members of minority groups and those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In Atlanta, for instance, pedestrian fatality rates during 19941998 were 9.74 per 100,000 for Hispanics, 3.85 for blacks, and 1.64 for whites. 181 In suburban Orange County, California, Latinos comprise 28 per cent of the population but account for 43 per cent of pedestrian fatalities. 182 In the Virginia suburbs of Washington, Hispanics comprise eight per cent of the population but account for 21% of pedestrian fatalities. 183 The reasons for this disproportionate impact are complex, and may involve the probability of being a pedestrian (perhaps related to low access to automobiles and public transportation), road design in areas Page 25 where members of minority groups walk, and behavioral and cultural factors such as being unaccustomed to high speed traffic. There is no evidence that sprawl-related threats to the water supply disproportionately affect poor people or members of minority groups. Similarly, there is no evidence that the mental health consequences of sprawl, such as road rage, affect different racial groups differently. In the survey data cited above, there were no racial differences in self-reported aggressive behavior, and while blacks were slightly less likely to be the victims of aggression than whites or members of other races, this difference was not statistically significant. 184

Systematic environmental racism ensures global environmental collapse and the total destruction of humanity

Bunyan Bryant, Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and an adjunct professor in the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan, 1995, Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions, p. 209-212

Although the post-World War II economy was designed when environmental consideration was not a problem, today this is no longer the case; we must be concerned enough about environmental protection to make it a part of our economic design. Today, temporal and spatial relations of pollution have drastically changed within the last 100 years or so. A hundred years ago we polluted a small spatial area and it took the earth a short time to heal itself. Today we pollute large areas of the earth – as evidenced by the international problems of acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, nuclear meltdowns, and the difficulties in the safe storage of spent fuels from nuclear power plants. Perhaps we have embarked upon an era of pollution so toxic and persistent that it will take the earth in some areas thousands of years to heal itself.

To curtail environmental pollutants, we must build new institutions to prevent widespread destruction from pollutants that know no geopolitical boundaries. We need to do this because pollutants are not respectful of international boundaries; it does little good if one country practices sound environmental protection while its neighbors fail to do so. Countries of the world are intricately linked together in ways not clear 50 years ago; they find themselves victims of environmental destruction even though the causes of that destruction originated in another part of the world. Acid rain, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, nuclear accidents like the one at Chernobyl, make all countries vulnerable to environmental destruction.

The cooperative relations forged after World War II are now obsolete. New cooperative relations need to be agreed upon – cooperative relations that show that pollution prevention and species preservation are inseparably linked to economic development and survival of planet earth. Economic development is linked to pollution prevention even though the market fails to include the true cost of pollution in its pricing of products and services; it fails to place a value on the destruction of plant and animal species. To date, most industrialized nations, the high polluters, have had an incentive to pollute because they did not incur the cost of producing goods and services in a nonpolluting manner. The world will have to pay for the true cost of production and to practice prudent stewardship of our natural resources if we are to sustain ourselves on this planet. We cannot expect Third World countries to participate in debt-for-nature swaps as a means for saving the rainforest or as a means for the reduction of greenhouse gases, while a considerable amount of such gases come from industrial nations and from fossil fuel consumption.

Like disease, population growth is politically, economically, and structurally determined. Due to inadequate income maintenance programs and social security, families in developing countries are more apt to have large families not only to ensure the survival of children within the first five years, but to work the fields and care for the elderly. As development increases, so do education, health, and birth control. In his chapter, Buttel states that ecological development and substantial debt forgiveness would be more significant in alleviating Third World environmental degradation (or population problems) than ratification of any UNCED biodiversity or forest conventions.

Because population control programs fail to address the structural characteristics of poverty, such programs for developing countries have been for the most part dismal failures. Growth and development along ecological lines have a better chance of controlling population growth in developing countries than the best population control programs to date. Although population control is important, we often focus a considerable amount of our attention on population problems of developing countries. Yet there are more people per square mile in Western Europe than in most developing countries. “During his/her lifetime an American child causes 35 times the environmental damage of an Indian child and 280 times that of a Haitian child (Boggs, 1993: 1). The addiction to consumerism of highly industrialized countries has to be seen as a major culprit, and thus must be balanced against the benefits of population control in Third World countries.

Worldwide environmental protection is only one part of the complex problems we face today. We cannot ignore world poverty; it is intricately linked to environmental protection. If this is the case, then how do we deal with world poverty? How do we bring about lasting peace in the world? Clearly we can no longer afford a South Africa as it was once organized, or ethnic cleansing by Serbian nationalists. These types of conflicts bankrupt us morally and destroy our connectedness with one another as a world community. Yet, we may be headed on a course where the politically induced famine, poverty, and chaos of Somalia today will become commonplace and world peace more difficult, particularly if the European Common Market, Japan, and the United States trade primarily among themselves, leaving Third World countries to fend for themselves. Growing poverty will lead only to more world disequilibrium to wars and famine – as countries become more aggressive and cross international borders for resources to ward off widespread hunger and rampant unemployment. To tackle these problems requires a quantum leap in global cooperation and commitment of the highest magnitude; it requires development of an international tax, levied through the United nations or some other international body, so that the world community can become more involved in helping to deal with issues of environmental protection, poverty, and peace.

Since the market system has been bold and flexible enough to meet changing conditions, so too must public institutions. They must, indeed, be able to respond to the rapid changes that reverberate throughout the world. If they fail to change, then we will surely meet the fate of the dinosaur. The Soviet Union gave up a system that was unworkable in exchange for another one. Although it has not been easy, individual countries of the former Soviet Union have the potential of reemerging looking very different and stronger. Or they could emerge looking very different and weaker. They could become societies

that are both socially and environmentally destructive or they can become societies where people have decent jobs, places to live, educational opportunities for all citizens, and sustainable social structures that are safe and nurturing. Although North Americans are experiencing economic and social discomforts, we too will have to change, or we may find ourselves engulfed by political and economic forces beyond our control. In 1994, the out-sweeping of Democrats from national offices may be symptomatic of deeper and more fundamental problems. If the mean-spirited behavior that characterized the 1994 election is carried over into the governance of the country, this may only fan the flames of discontent. We may be embarking upon a long struggle over ideology, culture, and the very heart and soul of the country. But despite all the political turmoil, we must take risks and try out new ideas – ideas never dreamed of before and ideas we thought were impossible to implement. To implement these ideas we must overcome institutional inertia in order to enhance intentional change. We need to give up tradition and “business as usual.” To view the future as a challenge and as an opportunity to make the world a better place, we must be willing to take political and economic risks.

The question is not growth, but what kind of growth, and where it will take place. For example, we can maintain current levels of productivity or become even more productive if we farm organically. Because of ideological conflicts, it is hard for us to view the Cuban experience with an unjaundiced eye; but we ask you to place political differences aside and pay attention to the lyrics of organic farming and not to the music of Communism. In other words, we must get beyond political differences and ideological conflicts; we must find success stories of healing the planet no matter where they exist – be they in Communist or non-Communist countries, developed or underdeveloped countries. We must ascertain what lessons can be learned from them, and examine how they would benefit the world community. In most instances, we will have to chart a new course. Continued use of certain technologies and chemicals that are incompatible with the ecosystem will take us down the road of no return. We are already witnessing the catastrophic destruction of our environment and disproportionate impacts of environmental insults on communities of color and low-income groups. If such destruction continues, it will undoubtedly deal harmful blows to our social, economic, and political institutions.

As a nation, we find ourselves in a house divided, where the cleavages between the races are in fact getting worse. We find ourselves in a house divided where the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. We find ourselves in a house divided where the gap between the young and the old has widened. During the 1980s, there were few visions of healing the country. In the 1990s, despite the catastrophic economic and environmental results of the 1980s, and despite the conservative takeover of both houses of Congress, we must look for glimmers of hope. We must stand by what we think is right and defend our position with passion. And at times we need to slow down and reflect and do a lot of soul searching in order to redirect ourselves, if need be. We must chart out a new course of defining who we are as a people, by redefining our relationship with government, with nature, with one another, and where we want to be as a nation. We need to find a way of expressing this definition of ourselves to one another. Undeniably we are a nation of different ethnic groups and races, and of multiple interest groups, and if we cannot live in peace and in harmony with ourselves and with nature it bodes ominously for future world relations.

Because economic institutions are based upon the growth paradigm of extracting and processing natural resources, we will surely perish if we use them to foul the global nest. But it does not have to be this way. Although sound environmental policies can be compatible with good business practices and quality of life, we may have to jettison the moral argument of environmental protection in favor of the self-interest argument, thereby demonstrating that the survival of business enterprises is intricately tied to good stewardship of natural resources and environmental protection. Too often we forget that short-sightedness can propel us down a narrow path, where we are unable to see the long-term effects of our actions.

The ideas and policies discussed in this book are ways of getting ourselves back on track. The ideas presented here will hopefully provide substantive material for discourse. These policies are not carved in stone, nor are they meant to be for every city, suburb, or rural area. Municipalities or rural areas should have flexibility in dealing with their site-specific problems. Yet we need to extend our concern about local sustainability beyond geopolitical boundaries, because dumping in Third World countries or in the atmosphere today will surely haunt the world tomorrow. Ideas presented here may irritate some and dismay others, but we need to make some drastic changes in our lifestyles and institutions in order to foster environmental justice.

Many of the policy ideas mentioned in this book have been around for some time, but they have not been implemented. The struggle for environmental justice emerging from the people of color and low-income communities may provide the necessary political impulse to make these policies a reality. Environmental justice provides opportunities for those most affected by environmental degradation and poverty to make policies to save not only themselves from differential impact of environmental hazards, but to save those responsible for the lion’s share of the planet’s destruction. This struggle emerging from the environmental experience of oppressed people brings forth a new consciousness – a new consciousness shaped by immediate demands for certainty and solution. It is a struggle to make a true connection between humanity and nature. This struggle to resolve environmental problems may force the nation to alter its priorities; it may force the nation to address issues of environmental justice and, by doing so, it may ultimately result in a cleaner and healthier environment for all of us. Although we may never eliminate all toxic materials from the production cycle, we should at least have that as a goal.

Impact – Biodiversity

Urban sprawl causes biodiversity loss

MSNBC 5 (1/11, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6814251/)

WASHINGTON - Urban sprawl is gobbling up open spaces in fast-growing metropolitan areas so quickly that it could spell extinction for nearly 1,200 species of plants and animals, environmental groups say. The National Wildlife Federation, Smart Growth America and NatureServe projected that over the next 25 years, more than 22,000 acres of natural resources and habitat will be lost to development in 35 of the largest and most rapidly growing metropolitan areas. According to the groups, as many as 553 of the nearly 1,200 at-risk species are found only in those areas. “The bottom line is that these species are at risk of extinction due to habitat destruction,” said John Kostyack, a National Wildlife Federation attorney and report co-author. “And in these metro areas, the leading cause of habitat destruction is sprawl — development of homes and office buildings and roads in outlying forests and farm fields.”

Biodiversity loss triggers extinction.

Diner ’94 (David, Ohio State, Military Law Review, Winter, l/n)

4. Biological Diversity. -- The main premise of species preservation is better than simplicity. As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist stress... [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which is cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wing, mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.

Impact – Food Shortage

Sprawl in the United States causes global food shortage

Imhoff and Lawrence 3 (Marc and William T, NASA biospheric activities scientist & Bowie State U natural science prof., NASA 11/20, http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/chap3.html)

At the continental scale the trend in land use conversion indicates that development is favoring the soils with fewer agricultural limiting factors. While preservation of the very best soils does seem to take place in some cases, it is occurring at the expense of the next best soils, which are often located nearby. This pattern is evident in the four most economically important farm states, except that in some states the very best soils do not appear to be preserved at all (e.g., California). Our data tend to lend credence to the theory that development is associated with soil resources with higher production potential. Since many of the very same physical properties that make soils good for agriculture are also good for construction, the relationship is logical. Economic incentives, then, are negatively synergistic: "good" soils bring economic wealth, thereby encouraging development, but are also themselves attractive soils on which to build. Short-term economic forces may tend to undervalue agricultural use relative to urban development, especially when agricultural production can be economically shifted to distant areas due to inexpensive transportation. That the top four agricultural states are experiencing this trend, however, bodes ill for sustained productivity in the United States. While the overall agricultural potential of the United States may not be seriously diminished at present, if the trend is allowed to continue, the country may soon experience a decline in agricultural production. Currently, there is less and less reliance on local agricultural products in the United States. Many grocery stores are stocked mainly with produce generated in a few primary agricultural zones in the United States and abroad. As the local soils are converted to nonagricultural uses, those localities will be even more reliant on their access to national or international markets. As such they will be vulnerable to changes in those markets and will be in direct competition with a very broad and, in some cases, wealthy customer base for the products. If the need arises to revitalize local agriculture to support growing populations nearby, only the poorer soils will be available for use. These soils will require more fertilizer and other inputs since more limiting factors will have to be overcome to make the soil produce a crop. The need to farm poorer soils will tend to increase the cost of production and the price of food. An example of this potential can be found in the state of Pennsylvania. Traditionally rich in farmlands, university experts estimate that Pennsylvania is losing 1% of its prime agricultural land to development each year, according to recent estimates (G.W. Petersen, Pennsylvania State University, personal communication). If the trend continues, in 100 years there will be no more prime agricultural land in the entire state. At that time, the human population will be much larger, suggesting that Pennsylvania will become increasingly dependent on outside agricultural resources. In a future world of large human populations, where will those critically needed soil resources be found? Many countries are all depending upon the surplus production of the United States and other productive regions of the world to help carry their growing populations through the next 50 years. However, the United States, too, is depending on its current surplus capacity to feed its growing population. In fact, the U.S. agricultural production capability as it is now may be overcommitted by a factor of three by 2050 since a large percentage of the world's population expects that the surplus production will be available to them. Given this possibility, it would be prudent to protect the best agricultural soils from development. Not only should the best soils be protected, but it is vitally important that the farmland conservation effort take place at the local level and not simply at the national level. Consideration should be made for sustainable development at the local level, so that there is not the forced reliance of local populations on the interstate transportation systems that consume huge amounts of fossil fuels and are deteriorating under heavy use. While more detailed local analyses are needed to shed light on how each region of the country will be affected by the loss of soil resources, one certain outcome is that depletion of productive soil will bring with it a dependence on more distant resources and require ever higher yields per remaining acre on poorer soils.

Insufficient production causes world resource wars and famine.

WILLIAM H. CALVIN, prof @ University of Washington [Atlantic Monthy] 98

The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause some powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands-if only because their armies, unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The better-organized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take over countries with significant remaining resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the remaining food. This would be a worldwide problem-and could lead to a Third World War-but Europe's vulnerability is particularly easy to analyze. The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas, drastically altered Europe's climate as far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than 650 million people. It has excellent soils, and largely grows its own food. It could no longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North Atlantic. There is another part of the world with the same good soil, within the same latitudinal band, which we can use for a quick comparison. Canada lacks Europe's winter warmth and rainfall, because it has no equivalent of the North Atlantic Current to preheat its eastbound weather systems. Canada's agriculture supports about 28 million people. If Europe had weather like Canada's, it could feed only one out of twenty-three present-day Europeans. Any abrupt switch in climate would also disrupt foodsupply routes. The only reason that two percent of our population can feed the other 98 percent is that we have a well-developed system of transportation and middlemenbut it is not very robust. The system allows for large urban populations in the best of times, but not in the case of widespread disruptions.

Warming Impact

Sprawl causes loss of arable land, value to life, and warming

Lamer ‘4 (Chad, Masters of Urban Planning (MUP) and Juris Doctor () degrees from the University of Kansas, practicing lawyer with King Hershey, P.C. in Kansas City, “Why Government Policies Encourage Urban Sprawl and The Alternatives Offered by New Urbanism”, Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, 13 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 391, Spring 2004, )

B. Environmental, Health, and Quality of Life Impacts

Sprawl consumes not only valuable agricultural land but also wetlands, forests, and open space. 137 In New Jersey between 1950 and 1980 nearly 50 percent of its agricultural land was lost to development. 138 The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that between 1982 and 1992 there was more than a 25 percent increase of urban land in the United States. 139 It is estimated that sprawl destroys 50 acres of agricultural land during “every hour of every day.” 140 This trend could lead to a situation in the very distant future in which the United States becomes forced to import agricultural products. 141 In a recent study, researchers from Rutgers and Cornell Universities examined metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) within the United States and looked at the effect of sprawl on daily quality of life issues. 142 The study was conducted over a three-year period and was peer reviewed by researchers from U.C.L.A., U.C. Davis, U.C. Berkeley and the University of Michigan. 143 The study defined sprawl as “low-density development with residential, shopping and office areas that are rigidly separated; a lack of thriving activity centers; and limited choices in travel routes.” 144 The researchers then developed four quantifiable factors that could be measured and analyzed for 83 MSAs within the United States. 145 The four factors measured included: “1) residential density; 2) neighborhood mix of homes, jobs and services; 3) strength of centers, such as business districts; and 4) accessibility via the street network.” 146 The researchers looked at links between “urban sprawl and transportation related measures” which included “vehicle miles traveled, traffic fatalities, the extent of walking and public transit use, roadway congestion and air quality.” 147 Their research indicated that there were significant adverse effects associated with living in a sprawling metropolitan area. 148 The researchers discovered there was a direct relationship between sprawl and an increase in the number of “daily vehicle miles traveled.” 149 In the study, researchers found the number of cars per household rose with increasing levels of sprawl. 150 They concluded, after controlling for income disparities, that in sprawling regions driving may be the only transportation option available and that many “households feel compelled to have a vehicle for each licensed driver.” 151 Additionally, the researchers discovered traffic fatality rates increased and the amount of ozone at ground level (smog) rose with increasing levels of sprawl. 152 The traffic fatality rate in the least sprawling MSAs was 20 fatalities per 100,000 people where as in the most sprawling MSAs there were 49 traffic fatalities per 100,000 people. 153 The results of this study demonstrate that people who live in sprawling areas “drive more, have to own more cars, breathe more polluted air, face a greater risk of traffic fatalities, and walk and use transit less” than people in less sprawling regions. 154 The study is important because it provides empirical evidence that sprawl negatively affects the quality of life for those who live in sprawling regions. There are other quality of life issues associated with sprawl that were not addressed in the study. In a sprawling landscape, children need to be chauffeured to school, to sporting events, and to entertainment activities. 155 Because walking is generally not an option for children due to dangerous streets and a separation of landuses, parents are forced to drive their children everywhere. 156 The effect of this is a total dependence on adults for transportation until children reach an age where they can drive. 157 Children are not the only ones who suffer from a total reliance on the automobile in suburbia. Elderly people who live in the suburbs become virtual prisoners once they reach an age where they can no longer drive. 158 They are forced toUrban Sprawl 401 either rely on relatives or move into a retirement home merely because they can no longer operate a vehicle for their daily needs. 159 This section has outlined a few of the negative consequences of sprawl as discussed by researchers and other writers within the field of planning. Its purpose was to show that sprawling growth has a variety of negative consequences. The next section proposes an alternative way of designing our cities as an answer to sprawl and suggests that this can only be accomplished by changing the zoning code.

***Affirmative Answers***

AFF – Alt Causes

Too many alt causes – gas tax

Emerson, ‘8 (Chad D, Associate Professor of Law, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, Spring 2008, “ALL SPRAWLED OUT: HOW THE FEDERAL REGULATORY SYSTEM HAS DRIVEN UNSUSTAINABLE GROWTH NAME”, 75 Tenn. L. Rev. 411, Lexis, )

2. How the Federal Gas Tax Facilitates Sprawl Unlike several of the other federal laws that have driven sprawl, the unsustainable effects of the federal gas tax are not due to the existence of the tax itself. Indeed, a gas tax could be a useful tool in combating unsustainable growth when the tax is high enough to make long commutes from sprawling suburbs and exurbs- the lifeblood of unsustainable growth-financially infeasible for the average citizen. n252 The federal gas tax induces sprawl not [*440] merely because it is levied, or even because it is too low to reflect the true cost of suburban sprawl. Rather, the true driver of sprawl is the manner in which the federal government appropriates the tax receipts. The federal earmarking of gas tax receipts solely for road construction and maintenance essentially constitutes a massive federal subsidy of a model of highway building that otherwise could not come close to paying for itself. Ironically, this is exactly the reasoning by which many criticize mass rail transit-that it requires a federal subsidy to stay in business. n253 For instance, one commentator has argued: Since 1972 Amtrak has received more than $ 13 billion of federal subsidies. Twenty-five years later, Amtrak appears no closer to financial independence than the day taxpayer assistance began. Worse, Amtrak has no apparent plan to become self- sufficient. In fact, it is now pressing for a half-cent of the federal gasoline tax in order to have a permanent umbilical cord to the federal treasury. n254 Exactly the same thing can be said about federal highways. The federal highway system-the roadway system most often connecting a city center to its suburban and exurban sprawl-received estimated annual funding of $ 30-60 billion per year during the 1990s. n255 This amounts to a massive subsidy, as not all car owners use the federal highways to the same degree, if at all. Those who live in the suburban outreaches drive the federal highways significantly more than those who live in the cities. Yet all Americans pay the same federal gas tax. In addition, this "subsidy" means that the tax receipts are inequitably distributed among geographic regions. In particular, statistics show that citizens of urban areas contribute much more in gas taxes than the amount those areas received from its allocation. n256 According to one report, Taxpayers in an estimated 158 metropolitan areas received 90 cents or less for each dollar they paid in gas taxes. Some 104 metro areas, including Dallas, Orlando, Tucson and New Orleans, received 75 cents or less; sixty-nine metro areas got back less than two thirds of what their drivers paid in gas taxes. The result of this funding shortfall is increased traffic congestion, fewer transit options, and more sprawl in outlying areas that is paid for by the [*441] suburban drivers who are increasingly stuck in traffic in and around our nation's cities. n257 Furthermore, the highway-only earmark has resulted in a complete underfunding of mass transit, making it almost financially impossible for mass transit agencies to invest in the infrastructure necessary to serve as a viable alternative to car travel. The federal government has invested upwards of $ 182 billion to create the national interstate system, but no comparable investment was ever made in passenger transit infrastructure. n258 For this reason, a recent report proposed that the federal government should address unsustainable growth patterns by "allow[ing] application of gas tax revenues to [a] balanced variety of transportation modes and projects." n259 The report reasoned that "[r]estricting the available resources to roads only inhibits a balanced network by greatly limiting the ability of transit agencies and others to pursue sufficient funding." n260 Finally, while Congress's 1982 passage of the Surface Transportation Act n261 did require that some federal gas tax receipts be placed into a Mass Transit Account, the present amount of the deposit-only 2.86 cents per gallon of the overall 18.4 cent per gallon tax-remains significantly less than the 15.44 cents apportioned to the highway fund. n262 As a result, the federal gas tax continues to facilitate sprawl by earmarking over 80% of the tax receipts to the federal highways that facilitate unsustainable suburban and exurban growth patterns.

Tax and housing policies

Knaap 2k (Gerrit, Department of Urban and Regional Planning University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Government Policy and Urban Sprawl”, http://dnr.state.il.us/orep/pfc/balancedgrowth/pdfs/government.pdf, )

Tax Treatment of Housing. The mortgage interest deduction and the capital gains treatment of housing in the federal tax code are the most frequently cited means by which the federal government affects urban density. Individually and combined, these programs have the effect of lowering the cost of housing and thus encouraging housing consumption. Although these features of the federal income tax have no explicit spatial provisions, they lead to lower urban densities if consumers of new housing units prefer them built on large, suburban (or exurban) lots, or if for other reasons large houses in urban locations or on smaller lots are not available (Green 1999). That is, federal tax provisions that subsidize housing consumption can exacerbate sprawl. Persky et al. (2000), for example, estimate that for the Chicago metropolitan area the federal tax code lowers housing costs 20 to 50 percent and thus causes land and housing consumption to increase about 20 percent. Under a different set of preferences or constraints, however, their effect could be just the opposite. If residents so chose, for example, tax subsidies could be used for high-rise condominiums located downtown. The same logic applies, of course, to federal home administration and veteran’s administration loans and public housing programs. But because these programs are administered by federal government agencies, these agencies have the capacity to concentrate public housing in the urban core and subsidize suburban housing construction regardless of consumer preferences. (Nivola 1998). Redlining is a particularly egregious example.

Laundry list of other programs

Knaap 2k (Gerrit, Department of Urban and Regional Planning University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Government Policy and Urban Sprawl”, http://dnr.state.il.us/orep/pfc/balancedgrowth/pdfs/government.pdf, )

Other Federal Programs. Myriad other programs and policies of the federal government also have potential to influence urban spatial structure. These include federal subsidies for sewer and water treatment plants, Superfund, the Clean Air and Water Acts and their amendments, federal facility location decisions, the Intersurface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and its amendments, and agricultural policies (US GAO 1999, US OTA 1995). Some of these programs and policies, like the previous cleanup requirements under Superfund and sewer and water treatment subsidies, are likely to exacerbate sprawl; the former increases the risk of inner city redevelopment while the latter lowers the cost of suburban development. Others, such as agricultural price supports and traffic mitigation requirements under the Clean Air Act and ISTEA, are likely to mitigate sprawl (Bollier 1998, Blumenauer 1998). Agricultural price supports increase the demand for, and thus the price, of agricultural land, making urban development more costly. The combined effects of these programs on urban development patterns, however, are likely to be small, at least compared to the federal influence via housing and transportation costs.

AFF – AT BioD

Impact’s locally contained.

New Scientist 3 [8-23, L/N]

However, one of the biggest supporters of such regional studies, Geerat Vermeij from the University of California, Davis, thinks any attempt to create global diversity curves is pointless, because lumping numbers together only obscures the details of local trends. "Global numbers mean absolutely nothing," he says. "An organism in the tundra couldn't care less about how many species there are in the rainforest." Instead, Vermeij argues, extinction should be viewed purely as a regional phenomenon. As an example, he points to the Pliocene, between 5.2 and 1.6 million years ago, when few extinctions happened in the Indo-West Pacific, but up to 70 per cent of bivalves disappeared from the western Atlantic. In that case, a global analysis might turn up only a minor extinction event, even though the event was catastrophic on a regional scale among a select group of creatures.

We can lose 95%.

Dallas Morning News 97 [10/27, L/N]

Even though populations are disappearing quickly, Hughes said that the second "Science" paper is "a bright spot in all this," describing how the tree of life could survive serious pruning. Even if 95 percent of all species are lost, 80 percent of the underlying evolutionary history remains intact, write Nee and Sir Robert May, also a biologist at Oxford. The scientists came up with equations to describe how much evolutionary history would remain after some species went extinct. And they found that it didn't really matter whether they killed off species at random or in a particular pattern. Choosing particular species to save didn't preserve much more evolutionary history than saving species at random, the research shows. The work has implications for conservation biologists, who struggle with choosing which species are the most important to protect. "It turns out that it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference," Dr. Nee said.

AFF – AT Food Shortage

There are numerous alternative causes to famine:

A. Agriculture fails because essential ground nutrients are lost when harvesting crops

Drechsel, Kunze and Penning de Vries 01 [Pay Drechsel, Senior Scientist (Environmental and Soil Science) and IWMI's Subregional Director for West Africa , Dagmar Kunze, FAO Regional Office for Africa (RAF), Frits Penning de Vries, was Principal Researcher and Douglas Merrey was Director for Africa, “Soil nutrient depletion and population growth in sub-Saharan Africa: A Malthusian nexus?” Population and Environment. New York: Mar 2001. Vol. 22, Iss. 4; pg. 411, proquest]

In comparison with erosion, nutrient leaching appears to be a minor contributor to N and K depletion and is negligible in view of P, but may become substantial with respect to other nutrients such as Mg (Pieri, 1992; Poss & Saragoni, 1992). If we calculate scenarios for upland SSA and assume zero erosion, runoff, and leaching (and avoid related assessment errors), we still get a negative N and K balance on average. The reason is that the amount of nutrients lost with the harvested crop and its residues is not balanced through the current level of inputs (fertilizer, manure). This means although the control of soil erosion is crucial, it can only reduce the speed of nutrient depletion under the current level of inputs, which corresponds with empirical evidence (Drechsel & Penning de Vries, in press).

B. Limiting and banning exports have made it harder for impoverished countries to afford food

Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin June 30, 2008 [“Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher” The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/business/worldbusiness/30trade.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin]

BANGKOK — At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at affordable prices. When it comes to rice, India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports. Fifteen countries, including Pakistan and Bolivia, have capped or halted wheat exports. More than a dozen have limited corn exports. Kazakhstan has restricted exports of sunflower seeds. The restrictions are making it harder for impoverished importing countries to afford the food they need. The export limits are forcing some of the most vulnerable people, those who rely on relief agencies, to go hungry. “It’s obvious that these export restrictions fuel the fire of price increases,” said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization. And by increasing perceptions of shortages, the restrictions have led to hoarding around the world, by farmers, traders and consumers. “People are in a panic, so they are buying more and more — at least, those who have money are buying,” said Conching Vasquez, a 56-year-old rice vendor who sat one recent morning among piles of rice at her large stall in Los Baños, in the Philippines, the world’s largest rice importer. Her customers buy 8,000 pounds of rice a day, up from 5,500 pounds a year ago.

AFF – AT EJ

Util good

Fried ’94 (Charles Fried “Rights and Wrongs as Absolute.” Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics. , p. 76. Ed. Haber 1994)

Even within such boundaries we can imagine extreme cases where killing an innocent person may save a whole nation. In such cases it seems fanatical to maintain the absoluteness of the judgment, to do right even if the heavens will in fact fall. And so the catastrophic may cause the absoluteness of right and wrong to yield, but even then it would be a non sequitur to argue (as consequentialists are fond of doing) that this proves that judgments of right and wrong are always a matter of degree, depending on the relative goods to be attained and harms to be avoided. I believe, on the contrary, that the concept of the catastrophic is a distinct concept just because it identifies the extreme situations in which the usual categories of judgment (including the category of right and wrong) no longer apply. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the concept of the trivial, the de minimis where the absolute categories do not yet apply. And the trivial also does not prove that right and wrong are really only a matter of degree. It is because of these complexities and because the term absolute is really only suggestive of a more complex structure, that I also refer to the norms of right and wrong not as absolute but as categorical.

Calculations are good and inevitable—you have a duty to avoid the worst consequences

Campell, University of Newcastle Professor International Politics, 1999 David, MORAL SPACES: RETHINKING ETHICS AND WORLD POLITICS, edited by Campbell & Michael J. Shapiro, p. 45-6

In this context, justice enables the law, but the law is that which “is never exercised without a decision that cuts, that divides.” The law works from the unrepresentable and seeks to represent; it takes from the impossible and conceives the possible; it is embedded in the undecidable but nevertheless decides. Nonetheless, “the undecidable remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost—but an essential ghost—in every decision, in every event of decision. Its ghostliness deconstructs from within any assurance of presence, any certitude or any supposed criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision, in truth of the very event of a decision.” The undecidable within the decision does not, however, prevent the decision or avoid its urgency. As Derrida observes, “a just decision is always required immediately, ‘right away.’” This necessary haste has unavoidable consequences because the pursuit of “infinite information and the unlimited knowledge of conditions, rules or hypothetical imperatives that could justify it” are unavailable in the crush of time. Nor can the crush of time be avoided, even by unlimited time, “because the moment of decision, as such, always remains a finite moment of urgency and precipitation.” The decision is always “structurally finite,” it “always marks the interruption of the juridico- or ethico- or politico-cognitive deliberation that precedes it, that must precede it.” This is why, invoking Kierkegaard, Derrida declares that “the instant of decision is a madness.” The finite nature of the decision may be a “madness” in the way it renders possible the impossible, the infinite character of justice, but Derrida argues for the necessity of this madness. Most importantly, although Derrida’s argument concerning the decision has, to this point, been concerned with an account of the procedure by which a decision is possible, it is with respect to the necessity of the decision that Derrida begins to formulate an account of the decision that bears upon the content of the decision. In so doing, Derrida’s argument addresses more directly—more directly, I would argue, than is acknowledged by Critchley— the concern that for politics (at least for a progressive politics) one must provide an account of the decision to combat domination. That undecidability resides within the decision, Derrida argues, “that justice exceeds law and calculation, that the unpresentable exceeds the determinable cannot and should not serve as alibi for staying out of juridico-political battles, within an institution or a state, or between institutions or states and others.’” Indeed, “incalculable justice requires us to calculate:” From where does this insistence come? What is behind, what is animating, these imperatives? It is both the character of infinite justice as a heteronomic relationship to the other, a relationship that because of its undecidability multiplies responsibility, and the fact that “left to itself, the incalculable and giving (donatrice) idea of justice is always very close to the bad, even to the worst, for it can always be re-appropriated by the most perverse calculation.”,’ The necessity of calculating the incalculable thus responds to a duty, a duty that inhabits the instant of madness and compels the decision to avoid “the bad,” the “perverse calculation,” even “the worst:” This is the duty that also dwells with deconstruction and makes it the starting point, the “at least necessary condition,” for the organization of resistance to totalitarianism in all its forms.

Public Transit Trade-Off

1NC – Highways Bad: Public Transit

High gas prices will cause a national shift towards public transit

PR Newswire, ’12 (5/15/12, http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/15/4491425/volatile-gas-prices-point-to-increased.html, )

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and Building America's Future (BAF) today released a study predicting that record numbers of Americans will turn to public transportation as a cost-cutting measure in the face of volatile gas prices. To meet this impending surge in demand, APTA and BAF are calling on Congress to pass a multi-year, fully funded surface transportation bill as the Senate and House begin Conference Committee negotiations. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120515/DC07561-INFO) The analysis used historical trends and independent research data to make predictions on the impact gas prices would have on public transit ridership across the nation. It showed that on average, nationwide public transportation systems will add nearly 200 million new trips this year even as gas prices fluctuate by as much as 50 cents per gallon. For example, as gas prices approached an average of $4 a gallon nationally this year, the analysis predicted an additional 290 million passenger trips could be expected on average for the year, resulting in more than 10.7 billion trips per year. Even as gas prices drop to $3.75, the analysis predicted there would still be an additional 240 million passenger trips because of the volatile up and down nature of fuel prices. These behaviors show that Americans are looking for a long-term, sustainable alternative to driving. APTA and BAF noted that commuters are initially drawn to public transportation because of gas price spikes but remained public transit users even when gas prices drop because of the numerous benefits of public transportation. The groups said that the nation's public transportation infrastructure is not prepared to handle the long-term unpredictable nature of gas prices. "Whether it is by bus or train, millions of Americans rely on public transportation every day and mobility in our nation's most populated areas depends on effective transportation options," said Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania and co-chair of BAF. "Without reliable transit systems, congestion in our metro areas will rise to unacceptable levels. With more people expected to ride already overburdened transit systems, it is imperative that Congress act and pass a well-funded, multi-year transportation bill as soon as possible." "The volatility of gas prices continue to highlight the vital need for our nation's leaders to provide long-term solutions to the increasing demand for public transportation," said APTA President Michael Melaniphy. "Nearly all experts agree that the swings in gas prices will continue for the foreseeable future. As millions of Americans are expected to turn to public transportation for a way to save money, we must address the ongoing capacity issues faced by many systems around the country. Congress must provide stable investments to allow public transit systems of all sizes from coast to coast to meet demand." "This study emphasizes that the elasticity of gas prices proves that Americans across this country view public transportation as an integral part of the transportation network," said Gary Thomas, president/executive director of Dallas Area Rapid Transit and chairman of the APTA. "Since the public views our commuting network as one cohesive system, we should fund and build it as one system where both public transportation and our road network complement each other." "Congress must pass surface transportation reauthorization that recognizes the added demand the systems are facing," said Paul Jablonski, chief executive officer of San Diego Metro Transit System and chair of the California Transit Association. "Our system achieved record ridership growth while providing vital transportation solutions to the citizens of San Diego. Our political leaders must look to continue to support its expansion." "We know these up and down spikes in gas prices will bring more riders," said Curtis Stitt, president and CEO of the Central Ohio Transit Authority. "We must invest now or our system will not be able to accommodate this influx of new public transit riders looking for alternatives to driving." The projected estimates use the 2011 APTA Public Transportation Ridership Report as a baseline. To show ridership growth, this elasticity projection is compared to a given increase above the average price for regular gasoline as reported in the last 2011 report by the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/15/4491425/volatile-gas-prices-point-to-increased.html#storylink=cpy

Highway projects tradeoff with public transit – hurts the economy

Litman, ‘9 (Todd, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 4/21/9, “Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation”, http://www.vtpi.org/econ_stim.pdf, )

Most highway expansion benefits are captured by consumers; it increases their mobility, allowing motorists to live in more distant suburbs and exurban areas. Only a small portion of these benefits are captured by businesses since commercial vehicles represent only a small portion of total traffic. Although some industrial trends, such as just-in-time production, increase the importance of road transport, other trends, such as telecommunications that substitute for physical travel, reduce its importance. More efficient roadway management, such as congestion pricing, can provide greater economic benefits by allowing higher-value trips (such as freight deliveries and business travel) to outbid lower value trips (such as SOV commuting) for scarce road space. Conventional project evaluation also tends to undervalue public transportation service quality improvement benefits (Litman 2007b). High quality, grade separated public transit attracts people who would otherwise drive on congested roadways, which reduces the point of congestion equilibrium (the level of congestion at which travelers reduce their peak-period trips). Although congestion never disappears, it is not nearly as bad as would occur without such transit services. Since transit services experience economies of scale, service quality and cost effectiveness tend to increase as demand grows, providing additional user benefits. Roadway supply experiences declining marginal benefits: building the first paved highway to a region usually provides significant economic benefits, but each additional unit of capacity provides less net benefits (SACTRA 1999; Kopp 2006). Although highways showed high economic returns during the 1950s and 60s, this declined significantly by the 1990s and has probably continued to decline since the most cost effective projects have already been implemented, as indicated in Figure 1.

Benefits of public transit uniquely outweigh highways

Litman, ‘9 (Todd, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 4/21/9, “Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation”, http://www.vtpi.org/econ_stim.pdf, )

Expenditures on public transit operations (bus and train maintenance and driving) tend to create relatively large numbers of jobs. According to one study, money spent on public transport produces almost 9% more jobs than roadway repair and maintenance projects, and nearly 19% more jobs than new roadway projects, assuming half the transit funds are spent on new capital projects and half on operations (STPP 2004). Transit vehicle purchases tend to have smaller economic impacts because they are mostly imported, although this could change with improved domestic transit vehicle production. Transportation maintenance and repair projects are generally faster to implement (minimal delay for planning or land assembly), create more jobs per dollar (little money is required for land acquisition or expensive equipment), employ more local workers (fewer tasks require specialized labor), and are more geographically distributed than large highway capacity expansion projects (Troth 2009). Table 4 summarizes employment generation from various infrastructure investments.

Yes Tradeoff

Investments are zero sum – highway funding creates a demand shift away from public transit, hurting the economy through inefficiencies

Litman, ‘9 (Todd, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 4/21/9, “Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation”, http://www.vtpi.org/econ_stim.pdf, )

High levels of automobile travel result, in part, from market distortions that favor automobile transport over other modes, such as underpricing for road and parking facility use, fixed vehicle insurance premiums, and dedicate funding for roads and parking facilities that is unavailable for other modes or mobility management strategies, even if they are more cost effective overall (“Market Principles,” VTPI 2008). Until such distortions are correcte, expanding congested roadways is economically harmful overall because it exacerbates problems such as congestion, crashes and pollution emissions. To their credit, some highway advocates support tolling of added capacity to recover costs and control congestion, but this only addresses two of the external costs of induced travel. Only if all the pricing reforms described above are fully implemented can roadway expansion be justified and efficient. Efficient pricing and smart investments would not eliminate automobile travel demand, but this analysis indicates that at the margin (relative to current travel patterns) many Americans would prefer to drive less and rely more on alternative modes if they had more efficient pricing, and alternative modes were more convenient, comfortable and affordable. This demand for high quality transport alternatives is likely to increase in future decades due to previously described demographic and economic trends. As a result, investments that improve the quality of user modes respond better to future demands than urban highway expansion.

PT Good: Economy

Public transit is comparatively better for the economy

Litman, ‘9 (Todd, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 4/21/9, “Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation”, http://www.vtpi.org/econ_stim.pdf, )

Comparing Highway and Transit Benefits There is considerable debate concerning the relative merits of different transportation modes. As previously mentioned, there is little debate concerning the value of basic highway rehabilitation, and much of the U.S. highway system is now due for major maintenance and repair, as indicated in Federal Highway Administration Conditions and Performance Reports (FHWA 2006). Table 5 summarizes results of that report, indicating that current annual highway and transit investments are approximately $28 billion below what is needed for basic maintenance and operational improvements, without highway expansion. It makes little sense to expand the highway system if current funding is inadequate for required maintenance of existing supply. Substantial additional investments are needed to maintain and improve existing U.S. highways and bridges, even without system expansion. Table 6 compares the highway expansion and public transit improvement benefits. Both provide economic stimulation and congestion reductions (although highway expansion generally only provides temporary congestion reduction benefits), but transit improvements provide several other benefits, including improved convenience and comfort to current transit travelers, parking and consumer cost savings, improved mobility for non-drivers, and various environmental and social benefits. Public transit improvements provide a wider range of benefits than highway expansion.

Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation

The portion of total household budgets devoted to transport (automobiles and transit) tend to decline with increased transit ridership, and is lower on average in transit oriented cities. For example, adding an urban highway lane typically accommodates about 2,000 additional daily vehicle trips. Although this reduces congestion on that roadway (at least temporarily, until generated traffic fills the capacity), it often increases “downstream” surface street traffic congestion, increases parking demand, requires travelers to own and operate automobiles, and if additional vehicle travel is induced it increases accidents, energy consumption, pollution and sprawl, all costs that could be reduced if the same trips are made by alternative modes. Residents of multi-modal communities tend to spend less on transportation overall, as illustrated in Figure 5, savings $1,000 to $3,000 annually per household in transport expenditures and so have more money to spend on other goods (“Affordability,” VTPI 2008). In addition, governments and businesses have lower roadway and parking costs. Table 7 summarizes external costs of increased vehicle traffic and sprawl, costs that tend to be reduced with improvements to alternative modes. Increased vehicle traffic and sprawl impose various external costs (costs imposed on other people). Most traffic lanes carry far more total daily trips, but these are the additional trips that can occur because peak-period traffic is less congested. Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation Critics sometimes point out that public transit requires more public subsidy per passenger-mile than automobile travel, but this comparison is unfair (“Transit Evaluation,” VTPI 2009). About half of transit subsidies are intended to provide basic mobility (service at times and locations with low demand, and special services for people with disabilities), which requires large subsidy per passenger-mile. Transit operates on major urban corridors where any form of transport is costly to provide. In addition, automobile travel receives significant non-government subsidies such as free parking. When properly evaluated, public transit often turns out to be more cost effective and require less total subsidy than accommodating additional automobile travel on the same corridors (“Transit Evaluation,” VTPI 2009).

***Affirmative Answers***

AFF – No PT Investment

Both states and federal budgets are slashing public transit

Plumer, ’12 (Brad, 5/9/12, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/for-public-transit-the-recessions-still-not-over/2012/05/09/gIQAlExYDU_blog.html, )

Public transportation in the United States has faced a perverse situation these past few years. Thanks to high gas prices, more and more Americans are riding buses and trains. But thanks to budget crunches, transit agencies are actually cutting services at the exact same moment. Over at Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark has a post highlighting one particularly dramatic example of this in Pittsburgh. Due to a $64 million funding shortfall, the city’s Port Authority is threatening to close roughly 40 percent of its routes in the city this year. The before and after maps are really stunning. Here’s what Pittsburgh’s system looks like before the cuts: And here’s the skeletal “after” shot: It’s not as if Pittsburgh’s population is shrinking and can get by with a smaller transit system, either — according to the Census Bureau, Allegheny County appears to have grown in the past year, and the city is expected to keep adding people in the coming years. Freemark also notes that Pittsburgh is a particularly transit-dependent city: Nearly 20 percent of its workers use transit to get to work, a high number even for a city, and more than 25 percent of the city’s households have no vehicle. Although Pittsburgh is an extreme case, it’s not an isolated one. Transportation 4 America has been trying to track service cutbacks around the country with this useful map. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston recently carried out a series of service cuts because of a $161 million funding shortfall — even though overall ridership rose roughly 3 percent last year. States and cities don’t have the money to keep up with growing ridership. There’s a federal policy question here too: Right now, as the House and Senate are hashing out a transportation bill, one question at stake is whether Congress should do more to help states and cities keep their buses and trains running when local budgets get squeezed. At the moment, Congress doesn’t do this. Federal funds for mass transit can only be used for new capital projects, not operations. That explains why Pittsburgh is getting $348 million from Congress to build a light-rail tunnel extension under the Allegheny River, but can’t find $64 million to keep its existing buses and trains running.

AFF – PT Not Profitable

Public transit fails

Hannan, ’12 (Larry, 5/18/12, http://m.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-05-18/story/public-transit-not-profitable-enterprise-exemplified-first-coast-systems, )

The St. Johns River Ferry will never be profitable. Neither will the Jacksonville Transportation Authority bus system nor the downtown Skyway. This can safely be said because no major public transit system in America makes money. Transportation experts can't name a single major transit system that is a moneymaker in this country. "It's not a profit-making industry," said Mantill Williams, spokesman for the American Public Transportation Association. "Usually public transit fares covers about 33 percent of their cost." Anything that makes money is privately owned. Anything owned by a government tends to operate at a deficit but remains open because it is a public service, Williams said. "The New York subway will never make money," Williams said. "But New York would grind to a halt without it." Whether it's the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority that runs the subway and buses in New York, Miami-Dade Transit that operates the buses and trains in Miami or Hillsborough Area Transit that runs the bus system in the Tampa area. All lost millions of dollars in 2011, and expect to lose millions more in 2012.