Right Now Downtown

Chapter $18 of the book $20 Per Gallon is entitled, “Renaissance of the Rails.”  Says author Christopher Steiner, “People will cling to their steering wheels and their airline seats until their fingers are pried off by sheer financial behest.”

At $12 per gallon, Steiner asserts that the United States will have a desire to fund passenger rail in meaningful amounts.  By the time gasoline reaches $18 per gallon, the U.S. will muster the political will to invest in a national high-speed rail network.

Since 1956, the federal government has spent $20 on highways for every $1 it has spent on railways.  Railroads spend more than 15% of their revenues on track repairs, upkeep, and signals.  As gasoline prices increase, the ratio of public expenditures between highways and railways will become more and more even until, Steiner maintains, U.S. rail to road expenditures will become equal at about $18 a gallon. 

High-speed rail will not be limited to the Northeast Corridor, nor will new high speed investments be limited to California and Florida.  At $18 a gallon for gasoline, even Ohio will be brought, kicking and screaming, into reality.

The book $20 Per Gallon keeps getting more interesting as it progresses into higher gasoline prices.  Chapter $16 focuses on the impact of high energy prices on what we eat.

Our food supply competes for fuel.  Not only do we eat food that is shipped around the world, but food production itself is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.  Commercial fertilizer, for example, is made from natural gas.

Locavores will love Chapter $16.  High energy costs mean that huge farms in California and Chile will no longer be able to compete with Central Ohio agriculture.  Small farms ranging from 10 to 100 acres will sprout around Columbus, and most food will come from a distance of less than100 miles.  A wide range of produce will still be available most of the year because farms in temperate states such as Ohio will use hothouses heated by solar energy to grow food in early spring and late fall.  

We have built a food network that depends upon cheap energy.  Change will be significant, but it will boost local agriculture and family farms.

High energy prices will force painful change, but will also bring many benefits.  In Chapter $14 of his book $20 Per Gallon, author Christopher Steiner describes the renaissance of American small towns and manufacturing.

Small towns in the U.S. are generally designed to be pedestrian friendly, with central business districts surrounded by residential neighborhoods on a tight street grid.  Wal-Mart and other big box retailers turned small town economies inside out.

Tables will turn at $14 per gallon.  Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot and other retail chains will abandon their huge warehouse stores, creating 10,000 “ghost boxes” nationally.  Growth in small towns will implode.

Because construction materials will become expensive, towns with intact early 20th century neighborhoods and downtowns will recover quickly.  Towns on rail lines and navigable water will flourish.

Production of goods, including food, will become more localized as transportation expenses increase.  Manufacturing in the United States will become less expensive than producing goods in China and shipping them around the world.  Wal-Mart, which orders 80% of its merchandise from China and is the country’s eighth largest trading partner, will die.

Everything will cost more, but the beneficiaries of a less disposable and more localized society will be the environment and blue collar workers.  On balance, Steiner argues, Americans will be better off.

Why do I write about the book $20 Gasoline in my blog called “In Search of a City?”  There is a silver lining in high energy costs.  Cities and traditional town center will benefit.

Author Christopher Steiner in Chapter $12 maintains that high energy prices will correct the development mistakes made over many decades in the U.S.  They will make cities more orderly and dense as developers scramble to build housing and commercial buildings near bus lines and emerging rail lines.  U.S. cities will begin to look and function more like European cities.

Gasoline priced at $12 per gallon will drive households to seek neighborhoods where people can walk, bicycle and take public transportation.  Neighborhoods furthest from the urban core will crash first and hardest, not only because of high transportation costs, but because skyrocketing home energy costs will make 3,000 plus square foot homes too expensive for many people to maintain.

All cities will benefit, but older cities such as Cleveland will benefit the most.  Newer cities will struggle because they grew with bad or  non-existent planning and helter skelter development patterns.

Adjusting to high energy will be a painful process, but according to Steiner, the results will be more interesting and sustainable cities.

For those of you who missed the opportunity to purchase AOL stock in 1990, Chapter $10 of the book, $20 Per Gallon, is a must-read.  Even Bart may invite me to a party to talk about Chapter $10.

Gasoline prices of $10 will drive huge changes in technology.  Like the dot com era in the 1990s, hundreds of companies will emerge.  Many will become hugely profitable.  Some existing companies will be winners as well.  UPS, for example, is preparing for $10 gasoline by experimenting with all-electric and “hydraulic hybrid drive train” vehicles and is banking on the collapse of big box retailing to generate online sales deliveries.

Plug-in hybrid cars that cost $40,000 will become cost-effective for consumers when gasoline remains above $6.  All-electric vehicles will become common, and various more exotic propulsion systems will emerge for personal vehicles.  The new technologies will, however, be beyond the financial reach of many Americans.

There will be other casualties as well.  Shipping by truck will become prohibitively expensive for most products.  Road usage will drop dramatically.  The burden of maintaining a road system will be shifted to people who actually use it, further diminishing highway use.

Our roadway investments in 2010 may look pretty foolish in 2020.

The third chapter of the book $20 Gasoline is subtitled, “$8, The Skies Will Empty.”  Author Christopher Steiner argues that the number of airline seats will contract by half as the cost of fuel jumps to 60% of industry operating costs from 13% in 2003.  With the exception of Continental Airlines, “legacy” airline companies will cease to exist, including United, USAirways, American, Delta and Northwest.

Smaller airports such as Dayton’s will lose most of their service.  Small, regional jets will disappear.  Airlines will no longer offer flights for distances of less than 350 miles because of the amount of fuel required for taking off and landing an aircraft.

Scheduled air service will remain, but will become too expensive for most people.  Airline terminals will close gates.  Cities with multiple airports will consolidate service into one.

Some destinations such as Las Vegas that rely on leisure air travel will survive, but experience large-scale abandonment.  Others such as Disney World will close.

Families will live closer together.  College students will study closer to home.  Only the very rich will be able to fly to Aspen for a ski vacation.  Economies throughout the world will become more local.

The first chapter of the book $20 Gasoline, reveals nothing unexpected.  Its title is “Chapter $6.”

Americans got a brief taste of things to come in 2008, when gasoline prices topped $4.  The experience at $6 will be a more intense version of 2008.  According to author Christopher Steiner, SUVs will be worth nothing.  Diesel engines will be fully embraced by Americans.  Highway deaths will be reduced dramatically.  Obesity rates will drop as more and more people walk to transit stops and bicycle.

As in 2008, Americans will use mass transit in record numbers as $500 monthly gasoline expenses jump to $1,200.  A drop in gasoline consumption will result in a drop in gasoline tax revenues, and the government will not be able to keep pace with roadway maintenance.  In an effort to generate maintenance revenue, highways will become toll roads, further reducing their use.

Although denial runs deep with Americans, people will accept that rising gasoline prices are not temporary, but permanent.  Adjusted for inflation, crude oil prices hit their historic low prices in 1998.  Rising demand for gasoline among 1.8 billion newly middle class people in places like China and India will change energy use forever.

A friend and colleague of mine, Jeffrey Wolf, gave me a book last week called $20 Per Gallon.  The book describes the impact that increasing gasoline prices will have on our lives.

The premise of the book is that gasoline prices will become increasingly expensive once the world recovers from its current recession.  Imports account for 67% of U.S. oil consumption at a time when the world is experiencing an explosion in demand.  By 2021, the world will add 1.8 billion middle class people, including 600 million Chinese, all of whom will consume more energy.

China currently has four personal vehicles per 1,000 people, and that number is growing exponentially.  By contrast, the U.S. has 750 personal vehicles for every 1,000 people.  The growing middle class worldwide not only requires fuel for personal vehicles, but for many other consumer goods that are made from oil.  To make matters worse, greater demand for oil-based energy comes at a time when the cost of extracting oil is increasing and infrastructure for refining and transporting oil is aging.

I plan to blog about this book.  Chapter one is entitled $6.

I took my 12-year-old daughter to Cedar Point on Sunday for her birthday and had the rare experience of driving on Rt. 23 between Columbus and Delaware.  Delaware County is a mess!

With the exception of Highbanks Metro Park, this entire stretch of road is an unbroken string of strip malls, car dealerships and big box stores.  Development is strewn along the roadside without any apparent attempt to minimize vehicular congestion or encourage trips by foot, bicycle or transit.  Every destination seems to require a separate trip along Rt. 23.  Traffic is terrible.

Delaware County development officials are now asking for another interchange on I-71 between Polaris and Rt. 36.  According to a September 6 Columbus Dispatch article, “Delaware County officials hope that a new interchange on I-71 will help both traffic and economic development flow more freely into the area.”  The cost of the interchange will be $114 million.  We all know that subsequent costs to taxpayers will be far higher.

Yikes!  Do we really want to give Delaware County the ability to spew more Applebee’s?  Shouldn’t Delaware County fix the problem?

Last week I shared my view that blogs have replaced the conversations we used to have with one another on the front porch.  I also asked for you to share your thoughts by submitting a guest blog.  Eric Davies submitted this blog offering his thoughts on the topic of blogs as a virtual “front porch.”  Would you like to join us on the front porch?  Send your thoughts to information@downtowncolumbus.com. 

In his August 31 blog, Cleve Ricksecker discussed the purpose of his weekly downtowncolumbus.com blog and described it as a virtual “front porch” within the electronic communication medium.  I would agree with his assessment, but exercise my endorsement with caution.  Electronic communication in any form is ultimately only as authentic as the interpersonal connections we make in our communities.

A few years ago (okay – quite a few), a witty and wise English professor, who taught one of my final courses at Bowling Green State University, was about to leave BGSU to teach at an institution in a larger city.  In one of our last classes of the semester, she responded to a student’s comment that suggested her family would buy a large house within a new subdivision in an up-and-coming exurb of the city she planned to call her new home.  The professor rebutted this statement by saying, “The only type of house I will buy is one where I can sit on the front porch and have a beer with my neighbors.”

Although suburban and exurban neighborhoods/subdivisions may have strongly connected neighborhoods, the infrastructure on many does not foster interpersonal relations.  Traditional, older-style walkable neighborhoods, including downtown Columbus and other neighborhood business districts, are places that encourage social interactions that do not occur in large suburban office parks and isolated cul-de-sac oriented subdivisions.

Similar to neighborhoods, technology also can foster connection or isolation.  Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, email, the Internet and cell phones all provide information, education and some level of connection.  None of them can provide connection that amounts to the same depth as results from three dimensional community living and conversation, whether it occurs on real front porches or sidewalks, in cafes or living rooms.