Cascadia Scorecard Weblog

We've Moved! Cascadia Scorecard Weblog is now the Daily Score

Dear readers: We've moved! And changed our name! And gotten a facelift and upgrade!

Short story: Go to the Daily Score to get started on the Cascadia Scorecard Weblog's new home.

Longer story: Big news from Northwest Environment Watch. First, we're not Northwest Environment Watch anymore. We're Sightline Institute. Get the full scoop on the name change here, and rest assured that we've only changed our name--not our mission.

Second, we're also debuting a schmancy new website that we intend to be a phenomenal resource to exactly the kind of outspoken, active Cascadians that have been frequenting this blog (ie, you).

This includes a new home for the Cascadia Scorecard Weblog, and a new name: The Daily Score.

Same authors, same type of content, but--we hope--much more usable and searchable. (All 1100-plus posts from this blog are archived on the Daily Score, and the whole site is powered by a search engine on steroids--really.)

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Please continue to read the Daily Score, post your comments, and let us know what you love and hate about sightline.org and the Daily Score! (You can email elisa@sightline.org or ask_us@sightline.org.)

Thanks for sticking with us for the past two years!

- The staff at Sightline.

Rush Hour, By the Numbers

Sorry to be so Seattle-centric...but this post about Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct got me thinking. If the Viaduct is closed--whether for construction of a tunnel or a new aerial highway, or to make way for green space and a surface street--what happens to rush hour?  Does traffic in downtown Seattle get hopelessly snarled, and stay that way for at least 3 years?  Or do city transportation have some reasonable options for keeping people moving through the downtown core, even without a Viaduct?

Traffic studies show that the Viaduct carries about 105,000 daily trips. But most of those trips are at off-peak times when the surface streets have plenty of extra capacity. Sure, a trip along the Viaduct-less corridor would take a little longer than it does now; but the steet grid could easily handle the load.

But at rush hour -- particularly the afternoon -- there's precious little extra capacity on the city streets. So the thorniest problem that traffic planners will have to face will be accomodating rush hour trips on the street grid and I-5, during the busiest part of the day.

So, how many trips is that, exactly? And what are the options for dealing with the added load?

Earlier this week, the helpful and responsive folks at the Seattle Department of Transportation sent me some data that may help shed some light. As far as I can tell, it boils down to this: without the Viaduct, transportation planners will have to figure out how to accomodate the equivalent of 11,000 rush-hour car trips through the busiest part of downtown. Can they do it?

First, the data. (Feel free to skip the next few paragraphs if you're not a traffic geek.) Each year, the city collects data on traffic flows on the major arterials around Seattle, including the Viaduct and its on- and off-ramps. The data include figures for average weekday traffic, plus the traffic volume during the one-hour morning and afternoon peaks. Based on those figures, it seems like there are about 12,000 total vehicle trips on the Viaduct during busiest one-hour afternoon rush hour peak.

Now, without a Viaduct, some of those peak-hour trips will take quite a bit longer -- so people will shift their trips to other times of day, other modes, or forego them altogether. Based on published estimates of how much an increase in travel time decreases travel demand, it looks like demand for car trips may drop from 12,000 trips to 10,000 during the afternoon peak hour.

But some of those trips already begin or end in the Pioneer Square-to-Belltown corridor. A car that currently gets on at the Belltown northbound exit may have travelled through Belltown or downtown. So the peak number of cars added to surface streets after the Viaduct is closed will be somewhat less than 10,000.

To get a finer-grained look at where the traffic problems might be most severe, you can break down the trips on the former viaduct corridor into zones--Belltown, Downtown Core, Pioneer Square/Stadium, etc.--and look at the actual increase in travel demand in each zone. To me, it seems that the real pinch occurs in the Downtown Core--roughly, from Yesler in the south through Stewart in the north, and Alaskan Way on the west through Boren on the east. That area is already pretty packed during rush hour. With no Viaduct, peak-hour travel demand will increase by somewhere between 6,100 and 7,200 trips. (Note, this is a somewhat conservative estimate -- I'm assuming that some former Viaduct trips will "disappear"--i.e., move to other times or destinations--because they'll take too long; but I'm not assuming the same for trips already on the surface streets.)

So that's the one-hour peak. Over the course of a rush hour that lasts at least an hour and a half, that means that transportation officials will have to worry about accomodating the demand for some 11,000 addtional trips in the busiest part of downtown, during the busiest part of the day.

So, 11,000 extra trips: is that a lot or a little? It's a lot less than 105,000. But in my mind, it's still a lot of trips. The existing street grid may be able to hold a few more cars than it currently does. Some tweaks to traffic enforcement ("don't block the box"), elimination of some street parking during rush hour, and so forth may increase throughput a bit more. Still, even with those improvements, the demand for 11,000 extra trips could really jam up the afternoon rush hour. Even if people eventually adjust to the congestion -- by changing schedules or jobs, or switching to transit -- the early months could be brutal.

But if you add in transit improvements, accomodating 11,000 downtown trips seems much more achievable. The bus system already carries 31,000 people out of downtown during the afternoon peak. So getting 11,000 people to shift from driving alone to the bus would boost rush-hour transit ridership by a little more than a third -- tough, maybe, but not inconceivable.

And in theory, at least, there's ample capacity to handle that many trips in the bus tunnel, which is now closed for service. Once the tunnel reopens, it will be able to handle about 9,000 rush hour trips that right now are travelling on Third Ave. And when light rail starts running through the tunnel, its capacity could grow by a third or more. (To my surprise, it seems that the tunnel may have been underutilized; one estimate, a few years old now, is that the tunnel could carry 18,000 trips per hour (scroll down a bit to find the claim), with everyone seated, in buses alone. If that's really possible, then the tunnel alone would be meet the post-Viaduct demand.)

And then there's Third Ave., which is currently closed to cars during rush hour. If Third reverts to being predominantly a car corridor, it'll handle at most 2,000 vehicle trips during rush hour. But if it's kept closed to cars, and is used to handle an extended bus schedule, it can handle at least three times as many passengers.

So, there are three options -- (1) surface street and traffic enforcement tweaks, (2) adding light rail to the bus tunnel, and (3) keeping Third Ave. as a bus-only street even after the bus tunnel opens -- that could accomodate most, if not all, of the added demand for rush hour trips. If those options are phased in, as the Viaduct is phased out of service, it could be that many folks wouldn't notice much of a change to their afternoon commutes.

Yes, it would be tough to get people out of their cars onto transit. But if city officials have their way -- and the Viaduct is closed for reconstruction -- they won't have much choice but to try. There really aren't many other options.

And, as I've said before -- if a combination of transit and street improvements can keep downtown traffic moving, or at least bearable, for a mimimum of three years, why not see if they'll work as a permanent solution? Why spend billions of dollars to fix a problem that the city's already solved?

Sims Gets On The Bus

Is it a miracle? Can it really be so? Did I just read about a transportation plan that's actually useful and affordable? That can happen soon but also has long-term benefits?

I'm stunned by King County Exec Ron Sims' proposal to increase the sales tax to fund better bus service. For an additional 1/10th of a penny per dollar, Sims believes the county can drastically improve bus service--increasing the frequency and speed of routes and adding capacity to boot. (The Seattle Times reports; the P-I editorializes in favor.)

I have no idea what prompted Sims' outburst of sanity. These days, Puget Sound residents are accustomed to pony up for outlandish schemes of miracle monorails, glammed-out streetcars, multi-billion dollar tunnels, and vast highway expansion measures. (Not to mention problem-plagued light rail, the one transit option that's almost a reality.) Buses, on the other hand, are not especially sexy and they don't come with big-ticket political bragging rights. They're just staid, effective, flexible, and affordable. And--oh yes--they're already working so well that they're over-subscribed, at least in the city.

So on the upside, Sims' bus boosting proposal will improve mobility in the near future. On the downside, it doesn't promise flying saucers or citizen jet-packs, and it doesn't come with a flock of crazy-eyed proponents. (I do have a non-humorous quibble; but more on that later...)

Improving bus service is critical to the continued health of Seattle and the rest of King County too because it makes density work. As the region's density increases it should be able to leverage ever more viable transit--with more people in a neighborhood, it makes sense to run more buses, more often.

This morning as I was shuffling onto the 28 Express--a double-length bus crammed so full that we were standing in the aisles the entire length of the coach and crowding up near the driver--I wondered for the billionth time when Metro would start running twice as many buses. I also wondered why I wasn't on my bicycle. And I wondered whether I should drive more often. I'll bet my not-especially-dense Ballard neighborhood could fill double the buses, especially as more frequent departures tapped latent demand. And as nearly every week reveals new townhouses going up in formerly low-density lots, and condos rising along busy corridors, I wonder if we couldn't fill triple the buses.

So I'm all for Sims' bus proposal. All for it. I just hope that it doesn't get swamped by the headline-grabbers like the Alaska Way Viaduct tunnel, the regional transportation improvement ticket that voters will see this autumn, and all the other kooky multi-billion dollar career-makers. I'm hoping that local leaders--and local voters--remember that bus service works and it's a bargain.

Now a quibble. Why sales taxes? Most King County residents are already paying 8.8 percent and sales taxes are regressive, falling hardest on those who can least afford them. That's a problem, I think, in a county that's struggling with affordability issues. (Admittedly, some of that regressivity is mitigated because the higher taxes pay for bus service, which is especially important to lower income folks.) Wouldn't a better way to fund buses be something ingenious like a fee or tax based on the value of cars. Something more or less exactly like the monorail fee? *

* Yes, I know that such a tax/fee would require enabling legislation from Olympia. Enable it already. It has a host of benefits: it's progressive (because owners of more expensive cars pay more), it's nicely symmetrical (because it provides an incentive to switch from car to transit), and it's deductible from federal income taxes. It's also potentially localizable, meaning that your car tab renewal fee could pay for transit in your neighborhood. If West Seattle gets drastically better bus service, then West Seattle car owners could pay the bill. But if you live in Duvall and don't see many buses anyway, your fee could be proportionally lower. In any case, it would probably be far, far cheaper than the current monorail fee that's just about to expire.

Dead Man Walking

(Editor's note: See two other posts in series, "Carless in Seattle," and "A Mile From Home.")

Transit and walking are time consuming. Most people are just too busy. That’s obvious, right?

Well, as my family begins the ninth week of its experiment in car-less living, I’m finding a few flaws in that logic. Here are two.

1. Time spent on transit is different from time spent driving. People vary, of course, but for me, transit time is a pure gain over driving. I don’t enjoy driving. I’d rather read than listen to music or talk radio. And I can read without queasiness on all forms of transit. For me, then, car time is a waste of life, but transit time is living, and I’ll happily choose a 30 minute transit trip over a 15 minute car trip. For me, driving is time consuming.

2. Just so, walking doesn’t consume time, for different reasons. In fact, walking creates time. For one thing, if you walk for transportation, you don’t have to go to the gym as often.

More profoundly, walking gives you time you wouldn’t otherwise have at all. Walking makes you live longer, as Clark posted here. The largest ever study of the subject found that walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week, adds 1.3-1.5 years to your life, on average. (More vigorous exercise adds even more.) On reasonable assumptions (detailed below the fold), this relationship means that for every minute you spend walking, you get three back.

Time spent walking, then, is utterly free. It’s time you would have spent dead.

Nowadays, when I’m walking, I get a little pleasure in the thought that I’m cheating death, that every minute I spend afoot is an extra moment of life.

Boring, wonky, calculation notes:

My assumptions—which I’d appreciate some astute blog reader checking against the original journal article that reports the study on which Clark posted—are that you have to walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week, for thirty years to get the 1.3-1.5 year lifespan bonus. I made up the 30 year figure (too busy to read the journal (wink)).

Then I calculate 30 minutes x 5 (days) x 52 (weeks) = 7,800 minutes of exercise per year x (guess of) 30 years = 234,000 minutes of walking, repaid with 1.4 years or 736,000 minutes of added life. That’s about three minutes extra for every minute you walk.

Note that even if have to walk five days a week from birth to age 90, you’re still getting every single walking minute back, though you wouldn't get three.

Toxic liability

With the introduction of flat screens and HDTV, Americans are expected to toss over half a billion analog TV sets and computer monitors--containing thousands of tons of lead and other persistent toxins--in just the next three years.

This fact, combined with the momentum of e-waste legislation at the state level, means a new (big fat) liability has reared its ugly head on electronics companies' balance sheets.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged on the recent passage of e-waste legislation in Washington State. This week’s edition of Business Week covered the issue too, mostly by patting Hewlett-Packard Co. on the back for being an industry leader on the issue (HP was involved in helping draft and pass the Washington legislation). HP believes a proactive approach to e-waste will translate to bigger profits and a wider range of product offerings. Love all that.

The article goes on to expose those companies and sectors that are dragging their feet –notably the TV sector (and, oddly, Apple Computer, counter to their progressive image). Here’s the passage that struck me most:

“But manufacturers have many concerns, including the fact that take-back laws such as Maine's allocate costs based on the weight of the junk consumers return. Consider the implications for big picture tubes: A company like LG Electronics, which owns the Zenith brand, could end up being responsible for heaps of old Zenith TVs, even though LG's market share is relatively small. And IBM, which has abandoned the PC market, might still be forced to recycle millions of machines bearing its logo. "They're really discriminating against legacy manufacturers," says coalition spokesman David A. Thompson, director of Panasonic Corp.'s Corporate Environmental Dept. "New market entrants have no waste stream. They're getting a free ride in Maine and Washington."“ (emphasis added by me)

How much do you want to bet that when LG bought Zenith (or whatever company owned Zenith at the time), there was no line on Zenith’s balance sheet that said:

“Long-term liability: toxics installed in millions of homes; cost unknown and potentially enormous.”

And how much do you want to bet that the next time LG--or any other growth-by-acquisition minded electronics company--goes on a buying spree that it’ll be looking to put a number on that liability? If it doesn’t, then someone ought to be fired. All of the sudden what looks like a great deal could be a complete lemon.

And how does a would-be acquisitionee lemon-proof its balance sheet? Put safety first by getting rid of toxics in its products, and quick.

And how does a savvy investor in the high-tech market reduce risk in their portfolio (while likely also increasing returns)? Dump the stock of companies that aren’t taking the toxic liability issue seriously.

My guess is that HP saw this way in advance, and they’re spinning what could have been a huge liability into a market advantage. Well good for them. It’s a start.

This is part of why I love the market--it’s incredibly dynamic and responsive. And we as a society have both the ability, and the responsibility, to make it fair--to make it work for us, and not against us.

Last observation: one flaw in using component weight as the factor in allocating costs--if you’re a company producing an electronic with fewer toxics in it, you’re penalized the same as a competitor with similar product that’s highly toxic. Hopefully Washington can still design its program in a way that measures what matters. That is, it should allocate costs based, at least in part, on the actual toxic burden, and not just the overall weight of the components. (Anyone know any more about this?)

(And incidentally, I find it ironic that the legacy manufacturers are saying that the new entrants are getting a “free ride”--isn’t that what the legacy manufacturers have been getting for the past 50+ years?)

Thanks to EdP for alerting me to the article.

Power Roundup

There have been a couple of interesting energy stories in the news for the last few days.  First, from BC comes this story, about what happened when the provincial electric utility asked for proposals to ramp up generating capacity in the province:

Green power projects, including small hydro and wind facilities, comprise the overwhelming majority of private-sector bids submitted to BC Hydro in an ambitious call for new sources of electricity for British Columbia...more than twice the amount Hydro was expecting when it issued an open call for tenders last December, and equivalent to about 10 per cent of B.C.'s existing electricity supply.

Now, obviously, not all of that capacity will be built, at least not at first; but it's still a promising development that so many green-power proposals were tendered. The bigger news, perhaps, was that not a single new natural gas power plant was proposed.  Not one.  Apparently, the high and fluctuating price of natural gas is making it harder for such plants to pencil out.  What a change from a few years ago, when, in the wake of the 2001 power crisis -- and despite all the press attention that new wind farms got -- the Pacific NW added 17 times as much generating capacity from natural gas as from wind power.

And then (hat tip to Matt Leber) comes this news:  the Seattle Steam company, which generates heat for a number of the buildlings in the downtown core, is planning to switch from natural gas burners to wood. At some level this is troubling; burning wood for energy didn't do the forests of New England any good.  But Denmark has had good success with heat & power plants that run from biomass; so perhaps this isn't something to worry about yet.  To add to the good news, Seattle Steam is considering adding combined heat-power facility to its other downtown plant. They're massively efficient, since the residual heat that's left over after the electricity is generated is used warm local buildings.  If a combined heat-power plant designed right, less than 10 percent of the energy is wasted, compared with 40-65 percent for conventional plants.

Brazilian Whacks

It's interesting to see what Jaime Lerner -- the legendary mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, who created a world-class bus rapid transit system on a shoestring budget -- had to say about Seattle transportation, in a question-and-answer session with the Seattle P-I:

Is there a way to create dedicated bus lanes in a cramped city like Seattle?

"There are many ways, many corridors where you can have a really good system. ... Sometimes you think, 'Aaah we don't have enough space.' ... There's always a good solution."

How long does it typically take to set up a bus rapid transit system?

"You can build in two years a good system. It's not difficult, because it has not too much public works. It's very simple.

I tend to agree: bus rapid transit is far more viable than most people think.  It's cheaper, faster to deploy, and more flexible than rail.  Now that Seattle's monorail has been - uh - derailed, it's a solution that's worth considering for the corridor that the monorail was designed to serve.

And then there's this:

Some people say that if the viaduct were replaced with nothing but a surface road, heavy traffic along the waterfront would ruin it. Do you agree?

"If you provide good alternatives for public transport, you won't have traffic problems. ... Can you imagine how much better the city could become with 30 percent less of the cars running in the street? It's very easy. The main issue is having good public transport and after, if it's needed, the wall to protect the waterfront -- I don't have the answer to that. But definitely it's not the viaduct."

Seems as if the P-I editorial board may be inching towards the same conclusion.

Mossback's Catch-22

Another week, another anti-city screed from the Seattle Weekly's Knute Berger. There's lots to pick apart in this week's column by "Mossback," but I'll restrain myself.

According to Berger, increasing density won't address sprawl on the urban fringe because:

Big growth in downtown Seattle won't be a sponge for regional growth. In fact, it will likely drive additional growth in the region—just look at the San Francisco Bay Area, which has sprawled endlessly despite San Francisco's higher densities and incomes. A Seattle boom will generate more sprawl and more density, in part because we don't have the strict growth controls in place to truly limit it.

Berger's argument is a lovely compliment to sprawl industry flaks whose mantra is: we can't have growth controls because there's nowhere to build in the cities. But Berger doesn't want density because the growth controls aren't strong enough. No density without growth controls; no growth controls with density. This leaves us in a bit of a pickle.

The obvious solution that Berger overlooks is that increasing density can indeed help corral sprawl. Can density solve the problem all by itself? Of course not. Does that mean density is worthless for controlling sprawl? Again, of course not. Growth boundaries on the urban fringe are important too; and so is smart planning. (That is, density is a necessary condition of growth management, but it's not a sufficient one.)

Definitive proof that density reduces sprawl is hard to come by, but I can get close.

Check out this report, using Census data to track growth in 14 US cities during the 1990s. The cities that do best at controlling sprawl are also the ones boosting their density. Take Portland, Oregon. If Portland had grown like a typical city in the study--that is, if newcomers to Portland had spread out in the typical low-density fashion--the Rose City would have swallowed an additional 150 square miles of rural land. How did Portland spare so many farms and forests? A paired combination of density and growth boundaries. Seattle--with weaker growth controls during the period and anti-density Bergers in the mix--did worse than Portland, but not nearly so badly as places like Charlotte or Nashville.

Berger's argument is, in any case, weirdly perverse. He implies that density will actually speed growth into the Seattle region because--why?--people find density appealing? If people like density enough to move here, I suppose one strategy to prevent growth would be to outlaw density. Or we could try a massive urban uglification campaign, perhaps driving away current residents to boot. Even easier, we could just get rid of cops and fire departments and see how the region grows then. That'll show 'em. 

Truth is, I actually agree with Berger sometimes. I just wish he would stick to making claims he can support instead of getting carried away (see here and here, for instance). He's right to caution against damaging Seattle's historic and architectural legacy. And he's right to remind us, in a general way, to preserve the best of the old while we build for the future. But ranting about paying for parking (in urban neighborhoods, fer gosh sakes!) or "privatizing" sunlight by permitting skyscrapers (no, I'm not making that up) sounds less like civic smarts and more like incoherent ranting.

Toxic (Press) Releases

Good news about pollution?  The US EPA says so.  This Washington Post story makes it seem like the US made great strides in reducing toxic emissions in 2004.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that chemical pollution released into the environment fell more than 4 percent from 2003 to 2004...The agency said releases of dioxin and dioxin compounds fell 58 percent; mercury and mercury compounds were cut 16 percent; and PCBs went down 92 percent. [Emphasis added.]

Now, the fall in dioxins in particular seemed like pretty big news.  But it also struck me as a bit suspicious.  So I looked into the numbers a bit. 

The EPA's Toxics Release Inventory Explorer is pretty simple to use, so it didn't take long to zero in on why, exactly, dioxin emissions fell so much. The basic scoop -- it's not so much that dioxin emissions fell in 2004, as that they spiked in 2003.  The nation's dioxin emissions (at least, those captured by the TRI) in 2004 were comparable to levels from 2000 through 2002.  The 58 percent "decline" was just relative to 2003, which was abnormally high.

Then the question becomes -- what happened in 2003?  Apparently, there was a single wood-preserving facility in Lousiana that was responsible for the 2003 spike.  (I don't know for sure, but I'd guess they landfilled a bunch of contaminated waste.)

So the national "good news" story about dioxins in 2004--a 58 percent decline in releases--turns out to be, if anything, a bad news story about 2003. Or, more properly, it's an artifact of the way the data are reported:  the dioxin "released" in 2003 was likely just transferred from one place to another, in a way that triggered EPA's reporting requirements.

The thing is, it took just a few minutes to figure out that the EPA's press release was, at least in part, full of hot air.  Obviously, reporters are under tremendous pressure to churn out stories.  But I do wish that basic fact-checking was a higher priority for them.  Bum facts passed off as "good news" should be recognized for what they are:  a form of toxic information pollution.

Closer to home, the news seems a little bit better for dioxin trends.  In Washington, Oregon, and Idaho combined, releases to air, water, and land have fallen from 163 grams in 2000 to 46 grams in 2004.  "Off-site disposal" -- transfers for storage or treatment -- has climbed a bit, though.  On net, 2004's total dioxin releases were a bit higher than 2002 and 2003, but have fallen by about a quarter since 2000.  And the three states combined now account for about 2 tenths of one percent of national dioxin emissions, as measured by TRI data.

That said, there are some facilities that escape TRI reporting requirements, and much of the dioxin releases from the region are now from activities such as backyard trash burning.  But the numbers, for the northwest at least, do seem modestly promising.

Driving With Alcohol

Alcohol can lead to all kinds of unintended consequences, but who knew it could lead to energy independence? Apparently, the Brazilians did. Processing sugar cane into ethanol is expected to help Brazil meet its rising energy demands in a big way. According to an article in the New York Times, officials expect that within a year the country will become fully energy self-sufficient thanks largely to putting sugar in gas tanks.

Brazil's story is encouraging, but it's hard to know precisely what conclusions to draw for North Americans.

We can't buy Brazil's success by importing cane-based ethanol because our current policy regime all but disallows it. The US (and Europe too) slaps stiff duties on sugar imports--to the tune of 54 cents a gallon on cane-based ethanol imports, enough to render Brazilian ethanol at a competitive disadvantage.

We can't copy Brazil's success because our colder latitudes don't support sugar cane. Even Florida is considered only marginally productive for sugar cane and it comes at a horrific cost to ecological treasures like the Everglades. Hawaii produces sugar too, but its land base is far too small to meet American demand.

We can't imitate Brazil's success with northern crops like corn because producing corn-based ethanol is far too energy intensive.

Under the best conditions, corn ethanol yields only about 1.3 times as much energy as is required to produce it. Brazilian sugar cane, on the other hand, can yield 8 times as much energy; and producers think that efficiency can go to 10 times.

And even if we did somehow have access to Brazil's ethanol, our vehicle fleet couldn't take full advantage of it. But Brazil's can: more than 70 percent of cars sold in Brazil are "flex fuel" allowing drivers to alternate between ethanol and petroleum as price (or conscience) directs. Even better for Brazilian drivers, the flex fuel engines don't cost any more than conventional motors.

Sugar cane production is proving to be a boon to Brazil's economy, not to mention to its ecological footprint. (Nowadays, even the cane waste products are getting recycled back into various manufacturing processes.) But cane is not a free ride either: it's often grown on former pasture land and many fear that this will push livestock owners to clear more Amazon rainforest to make room. And cane growers are now pushing for genetically modified versions that will boost energy output and also resist disease and droughts. But GMO sugar cane may pose other unforeseen ecological problems down the road.

For me, the lesson from Brazil is two-fold. First, solving our biggest environmental problems (e.g. fossil fuel addiction and climate change) often forces us into other environmental compromises like deforestation and genetic crop modification. It's frustrating, of course, but real-world problems like energy consumption rarely offer no-downside solutions.

Second, there is not going to be any one-size-fits-all solution to the world's energy demands. Brazil can use sugar cane, but North Americans will have to figure out something else--something homegrown if independence is important. Conservation surely must be part of our effort to ratchet down reliance on oil, but we also must find local technologies and local resources for our energy needs.

Hitting the Sweet Spot

Here's a cool graph from the Puget Sound Regional Council that illustrates the "sweet-spot" for highway speeds.  Apparently, traffic throughput is maximized at about 1,800-2,000 cars per highway lane (the horizontal axis) when vehicles are moving somewhere between 40 and 50 miles per hour (the vertical axis).

As the graph shows, when speeds are lower than that, or higher than that, then highways aren't operating as efficiently as they might.

So it would seem (to me at least) that a key ingredient in reducing demand for new highways is to keep traffic on existing roads flowing at somewhere between 40 and 50 miles an hour, even at times of peak demand.  How to do that?  Metered on-ramps help; so would tolling the most congested highways.

Rage Against the (Hybrid) Machine

Some California drivers are getting all steamed up that they have to share the carpool lanes with single-occupant hybrids, like the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic, under a new state program.  Some of the complaints, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt.  Said one fumer in an online discussion group:  "These [drivers] barely go 65 mph and allow no one to pass them on the right... Talk about road rage!"  It's hard to feel much sympathy for someone whining about not being able to exceed the speed limit.

But I do think there's reason to be concerned that extra hybrids in the HOV lanes may be slowing down carpools & buses.  From the LA Times article:

"There's not enough excess capacity to absorb the hybrids," said James Moore, director of USC's transportation engineering program. "I think the foreseeable outcome here is that the congestion advantage we traditionally attribute to [carpool] lanes will disappear."

Promoting hybrids could help save fuel. But there's plenty of reason to believe that -- looking at overall efficiency of road transport -- filling the HOV lanes with hybrids could do more harm than good.  Seems to me that California was smart in limiting the number of hybrids allowed in the carpool lanes, and studying the effects before proceeding.

Sturgeon's General Warning

Sounds as though salmon aren't the only Columbia River fish in trouble:

A team of researchers that examined 174 sturgeon caught by commercial and tribal fishermen found male and immature females tricked by chemicals into thinking they are full of estrogen, a female hormone with feminizing effects. Male fish tainted with a cocktail of compounds including mercury and a byproduct of the banned pesticide DDT showed depressed testosterone levels, which could keep them from maturing enough to spawn.

A few sturgeon even had bizarre combinations of male and female sexual organs. [Emphasis added.]

All I have to say to that is:  eewww.  If that doesn't serve as a wakeup call about gender-bending pollutants, I'm not sure what will.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

I picked up a copy of the March issue of Seattle Magazine the other day, and happened across an article (print only, I'm afraid) by the estimable Joe Follansbee.  The article claims that Seattle suffers from an inferiority complex:  whenever Seattle residents compare their home town with Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, BC, they always decide that Seattle comes up short. Follansbee argues that Seattle should just learn to love itself just as it is, rather than falling victim to sibling rivalry.

Interesting enough idea.  But there's one thing that sticks in my craw:  in trying to puncture the reputation of neighboring cities, Follansbee claims that Portland has an unusally low number of children, compared with its neighboring metropolises:

Portland's downtown Pearl District, hailed as the embodiment of "smart growth"...had only three more children living there in 2000 than in 1990, according to demographers.  What's "smart" about a city without children?

Do we [i.e., Seattle] want to be like Portland, childless and..."proper"?

Enough already! This factoid--that Portland is devoid of tykes--is simply false. It doesn't even pass the 5 minute Google test; that is, it takes less than five minutes of web searching to see that it doesn't hold water.  And yet, it's a theme I hear again and again in discussions of Portland and smart growth generally.

It's high time to roast this chestnut.

As it turns out, what's true for Portland's Pearl District -- that there aren't many children -- doesn't hold true for the rest of Portland.  Take a look at the Census Bureau's Portland "quick facts." As of the last Census count, 21.1 percent of the city's residents were children under the age of 18, compared with 24.7 for Oregon as a whole. 

So the city does have fewer children than the state as a whole, by 3.6 percentage points.  But take a look at the Seattle "quick facts."  Minors account for just 15.6 percent of the city's population.  In comparison, Portland is teeming with kids -- 40 percent more, measured per capita, than in Seattle.  And the gap between Seattle and the whole of Washington is 10 percentage points -- nearly 3 times wider than the gap between Portland and Oregon.

So it makes absolutely no sense -- none -- to ask whether Seattle wants to be "childless" like Portland.

Admittedly, Portland has fewer kids than many US cities.  But it's pretty much on par with Denver and Minneapolis, has a few more kids per capita than Pittsburgh, and far more than San Francisco (where under-18-year-olds are just 14.5 percent of the population).  In Vancouver, BC -- often held up as an exemplar of family-friendly urbanity -- children under 18 made up only 15.5 16.6 percent of the population in 2001. 

Diving into the Vancouver numbers a bit deeper, it seems that there's no major part of Vancouver -- not downtown, not the west side, not even the semi-suburban south end -- that has a kids-to-population ratio that's as high as in Portland.  And the kid-to-population gap between Vancouver and the whole of BC is wider than for Portland and the whole of Oregon.  Vancouver's denser neighborhoods have a reputation for having lots of kids, and in large part they do -- but only because they have lots of people, period.  As a share of the population, though, Portland has far more kids than "kid-friendly" Vancouver.

I'm sure this post won't put an end to the urban legend of Portland's childlessness (although it may perpetuate the impression that there aren't many kids in the Northwest's other major cities).  But I hope it helps.

On a deeper level, I'm puzzled by all the hand-wringing about childless cities.  As of the last census, families with children comprised less than one in three Northwest households.  And the number of childless households is growing for good reasons.  We're having kids later in life, and fewer of them -- largely because of better educational and job opportunities for women.  Plus we're living longer, so seniors are making up a far larger share of the population than they used to.  For the large and growing number of childless households, urban living has a strong appeal -- they're the ones who appear to be flocking to housing in dense urban centers.  So to the extent that the trends towards "childless cities" is real, it's largely driven by demographic changes that we'd be foolish to want to reverse.

What do the angst-ridden commentators lamenting the lack of children downtown want people to do? Have kids even if they'd prefer not to? Die before they get a chance to down-nest?  Move their families to urban condos in order to save some single-family detached houses for hipsters?  Help me out here, folks.

Parking Paradigm Shift?

Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Todd Litman, author of “Parking Management Best Practices," and founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. For more information see his free summary report (pdf), Parking Management: Strategies, Evaluation and Planning.

A great example of the maxim “no free lunch” is the common struggle over parking. Motorists often assume that parking should be abundant and free at nearly every destination, and any deviation from this is considered a problem that must be solved by developers (who are forced to construct ever larger parking facilities when building or upgrading buildings) and governments (who are forced to provide subsidized public parking).

But—as noted in these three recent Planetizen op-eds (and previously in this blog), none of this parking is really free. We all pay double through higher rents, higher prices, higher taxes, increased traffic problems and sprawl. These practices are also inequitable since they force non-drivers to subsidize parking costs, reduce travel options for non-drivers, and reduce housing affordability.

The good news is that a fundamental shift in parking planning is gaining momentum. Communities and planners are beginning to adopt the “no free lunch” approach to parking. They’re developing policies and programs—called parking management--that use parking resources more efficiently. And they’re reaping benefits ranging from more-vibrant downtowns to more-affordable housing to a greater variety of transit options.

Here are some examples of successful programs.

Downtown Pasadena Redevelopment: During the 1970s Old Pasadena’s downtown had become run down, with many derelict and abandoned buildings and few customers, in part due to the limited parking available to customers. Curb parking was restricted to two-hour duration but many employees simply parked in the most convenient, on-street spaces and moved their vehicles several times each day. The city proposed pricing on-street parking as a way to increase turnover and make parking available to customers. Many local merchants originally opposed the idea. As a compromise, city officials agreed to dedicate all revenues to public improvements that make the downtown more attractive. A Parking Meter Zone (PMZ) was established within which parking was priced and revenues were invested.

With this proviso, the merchants agreed to the proposal. They began to see parking meters in a new way: as a way to fund the projects and services that directly benefit their customers and businesses. The city formed a PMZ advisory board consisting of business and property owners, which recommended parking policies and set spending priorities for the meter revenues. Investments included new street furniture and trees, more police patrols, better street lighting, more street and sidewalk cleaning, pedestrian improvements, and marketing.

This created a “virtuous cycle” in which parking revenue funded community improvements that attracted more visitors which increased the parking revenue, allowing further improvements. This resulted in extensive redevelopment of buildings, new businesses and residential development. Parking is no longer a problem for customers, who can almost always find a convenient space. Local sales tax revenues have increased far faster than in other shopping districts with lower parking rates, and nearby malls that offer free customer parking. This indicates that charging market rate for parking with revenues dedicated to local improvements can be an effective way to support urban redevelopment.

Tri-Met Parking Management in Portland: The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District, which manages transportation in the Portland, Oregon area, has implemented various parking management strategies around transit stations to minimize costs and support transit-oriented development.

These include:

• Sharing parking with Park & Ride and other types of land uses, including apartments, churches, movie theaters and government buildings near transit stations.
• Using lower minimum parking requirements around transit stations.
• Allowing Park & Ride capacity near transit stations to be reduced if the land is used for transit-oriented development, thus allowing walking and bike trips to replace car trips.

More Accurate Parking Requirements in Vancouver: Vancouver, British Columbia, is developing a more flexible approach to parking requirements for multi-family dwellings to support efficient transportation, smart growth and housing affordability objectives. The program is loosely based on the LEED TM Green building rating system. Developers receive credits for reducing the number of parking stalls, providing parking spaces for carshare vehicles, and providing annual transit passes to building occupants.

Rich Sorro Commons, San Francisco, California (USEPA, 2006): Rich Sorro Commons is a mixed-use project with 100 affordable units and approximately 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail. Conventional standards would require 130 to 190 parking spaces for such a building, but it was constructed with only 85 parking spaces, due to proximity to high-quality public transit services, the provision of two carshare parking spaces in the building, and the fact that the building provides affordable housing, with tenants who are less likely to own a car.

Reduced parking supply freed up space for a childcare center and more ground-level retail stores. Just 17 avoided spaces allows the project to generate $132,000 in additional annual revenues (300 square feet per space at $25.80 per square foot in rent), making housing more affordable. Two carshare vehicles are available to residents, giving them access to a car without the costs of ownership – a particularly important benefit for low-income households.

Austin Parking Benefit District: Many neighborhoods experience parking spillover problems, including difficulty finding parking for residents and visitors, concerns that public service vehicles cannot pass two lanes of parked vehicles on the street, or that parking on the street reduces neighborhood attractiveness. These problems become an opportunity with the establishment of a Parking Benefit District (PBD) A PBD is created by metering the on-street parking (either with pay stations on the periphery of the neighborhood or with the traditional parking meters) and dedicating the revenue, minus City expenses for maintenance and enforcement, towards improvements in the neighborhood that promote walking, cycling and transit use, such as sidewalks, curb ramps, and bicycle lanes. Charging for parking and promoting alternatives reduces parking in neighborhoods and helps fund neighborhood benefits. The PBD may be used in conjunction with a Residential Permit Parking program to ensure that parking is available for residents and their visitors.

Using Parking Revenue to Support Transit in Boulder: Faced with a shortage of parking for customers, Boulder, Colorado. developed a program to encourage downtown employees to use alternative commute modes. In 1993, Boulder’s City Council mandated restricted downtown parking and appealed for parking demand management for the city’s commuters. The Central Area General Improvement District (CAGID), made up of many of downtown’s 700 businesses, responded to the Boulder City Council’s demands by creating a system using revenue from downtown parking meters to pay for free bus passes. The passes are provided for all of the district’s 7,500 employees, and cost $500,000 each year. The City of Boulder offers deeply discounted Eco-Passes to businesses outside the CAGID, and to residents, and encourages walking and bicycling. The program has changed travel behavior, freeing up valuable customer parking spaces and reducing parking costs, congestion, accidents and pollution emissions.

• Employee carpooling increased from 35% in 1993 to 47% in 1997.
• The district’s employees require 850 fewer parking spaces.
• More available parking has increased retail activity in downtown Boulder.

Although individual parking management strategies often have modest impacts, typically reducing parking requirements by just 5-15%, their effects are cumulative. A cost-effective, integrated parking management program can often reduce parking requirements by 20-40%, while improving user convenience and helping to achieve other planning objectives, such as supporting more compact development, encouraging use of alternative modes, and increasing development affordability. This can increase profits and help address a wide range of transportation and land use problems.

P.S. For more information, see VTPI’s summary report, Parking Management: Strategies, Evaluation and Planning

Sea Sick

As if global warming weren't bad enough: as this Oregonian story points out, rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not only heating the climate, they're making seawater more acidic -- which in turn "could wreak profound changes on the diversity and productivity of oceans." 

It's an interesting bit of scientific detective work.  Some types of ocean plankton are apparently very sensitive to pH: their shells can't form when the water grows too acidic.  The oceans have been absorbing a lot of the CO2 that's been emitted by fossil fuel burning, and higher levels of dissolved CO2 have raised the ocean's acidity by 30 percent in the last century or so.  The result:  the plankton are getting squeezed out, especially from the cool northern Pacific waters that absorb the most CO2.  Scientists predict that if CO2 levels continue to rise, the higher acidity could eliminate these plankton, along with shelled sea creatures such as the sea urchin, from polar waters sometime in the next century.

This sort of thing is as fascinating as it is disturbing -- and it should serve as a reminder that, in  subtle and often unpredictable ways, our fossil fuel consumption may wind up fraying the earth's ecosystems over the coming century just as much as pollution and habitat loss did in the previous one.

Hybrid Whiplash

What to make of this news from the Eugene, OR Register-Guard?

In a report that's sure to be controversial, CNW Marketing Research of Bandon concludes... that, even though hybrid cars use less fuel, they require more energy - and are therefore worse for the environment - than conventional cars because their design and manufacture are more complex and the costs of disposal or recycling are higher for their batteries, electric motors and other specialized components. [Emphasis added.]

Hybrids use more energy than regular cars? Is this real, or just pro-SUV propaganda?

Now, just to be clear, I haven't reviewed the study myself. But the online materials that's CNW's made publicly available seem serious & fair-minded -- not like a cheap hit-job on hybrids, but rather a sober analysis that reaches some unexpected and counterintuitive conclusions.

That said, I think there's very good reason not to take the study too seriously. Not yet -- and not until the authors can answer some tough questions about what their study implies.

CNW does deserve credit for looking at energy costs over a vehicle's entire life cycle--not just what it consumes on the road, but also what it costs to manufacture, distribute, repair, and dispose of a car. But some of their numbers seem, to put it mildly, a little hard to believe.

According to the study's methods, a Honda Civic (not a hybrid, but a regular model) uses only about 30 percent of its life-cycle energy as gasoline. (See here for the chart.) About 10 percent each go to parts, manufacturing, repair, dissassembly, and replacement; and 20 percent go to other energy costs.

Let's say that's reasonably representative of other models -- that is, gasoline accounts for only about 30 percent or thereabouts of the life-cycle energy costs of owning and operating the average car or light truck. But according to the US Energy Information Administration, gasoline consumption accounts for 17 percent of total energy consumption in the US (see here for total consumption, and here for total gasoline). So that would imply that car manufacture, repair, recycling and other energy costs account about 40 percent of the total US energy supply.

Forty percent? That's just plain wrong. The entire US industrial sector only consumes 33 percent of the nation's energy. So the subset devoted to cars has to consume only a fraction of that.

Just so, it seems downright implausible that cars are responsible for some 57 percent of the nation's total energy use (17 percent for gasoline, 40 percent for manufacture, repair, recycling, etc.). Cars use a lot of energy, to be sure -- but I simply can't believe it's that much.

So that means either: the Honda Civic is a vastly atypical car, and uses substantially more manufacturing energy than most other cars; that I've misread the (limited) available data from CNW; or that the study's authors have some explaining to do if they're going to convince me that I should pay much attention to their results.

One Mile from Home

(Editor's note: See the two other posts in the walkability series, "Carless in Seattle" and "Dead Man Walking.")

Last week, I displayed the wreckage of our 1986 stationwagon; this week, its replacement: our 1996 Burley stroller/bike trailer. (It’s Cascadia-made in Eugene, Oregon.)

The kids have long-since outgrown the thing. But since we decided to experiment in car-less living, we’ve resurrected it to haul groceries, library books, and (recently) a broken vacuum cleaner.

The Burley’s range is only as far as you want to push it. And for my family, that limit seems to be about one mile. Less than a mile is a comfortable walk; more is a burden. (To extend the range, we can fit the Burley to a bicycle—on which, more another day.)

A one-mile perimeter, therefore, defines this car-less family’s pedestrian travel zone—call it our “walkshed.” Fortunately, because we chose to live in a compact community, our walkshed turns out to be well stocked.

We can stroll to scores of shops and services—248 to be precise. I know because I counted. You can, too, in less than 60 seconds. I’ll tell you how in a moment.

Among the establishments in our domain are a bowling alley, a produce stand, a movie theater, and a hardware store, plus public institutions such as our post office, swimming pool, farmers’ market, and skate park (new and very cool!).

We’ve got pairs of independent booksellers, thrift stores (we know them well), and bakeries (ditto). Three pharmacies, three yoga studios, and three video stores offer us medication, meditation, and mesmerization, respectively. Five grocers and six dry cleaners compete for our appetites and our wrinkles. Nine barbers eye our locks. Dozens of specialty shops hawk their curiosities in the range of our Burley: one sells only flags, another only gifts from Norway, a third only old magazines.

True coffee houses number six, only one of them a Starbucks (which, because it's so low, may be the most surprising number in this tally). Restaurants? We’re provisioned with 54! (And there are 151 within two miles: we’ll walk farther for great eating.)

Two neighborhood ice creameries are counteracted by an astonishing 42 dentists (none of them covered by our insurance, sadly). Two local smoke shops are outnumbered by an even more astounding 74 doctors (again, not covered by our insurance). And then there’s our one neighborhood orthodontist: he has straightened or is straightening all three of our kids’ teeth, for which we've paid him enough to buy three used Volvos or most of a new Prius.

I should perhaps note that, despite these large counts, we do not live downtown. Far from it—-in fact, five miles from it. Our neighborhood of Ballard is a typical streetcar community developed largely in the 1920s and replicated in every North American city of similar age.

I should also probably note that our neighborhood is definitely not Mayberry. It's got 44 auto shops, 10 taverns, and a liquor store. Oh, plus two sex-toy shops and two strip clubs. (Or so the signs say -- I’ve never been inside. I swear.)

All of these counts I did in my head or using the yellow pages, and you can do the same for your home if you live in the United States. (4/10 Update: This tool is really only reliable in states where Qwest offers local phone service. Elsewhere, the count is incomplete. Here's a map of their area. Tip of the hat to Joseph W., in comments, for this catch.)

Here’s how:

To get a fairly complete count of businesses (in Qwest's 14 states), go to this Qwest online phone directory, select the business listings, type “all” in the category field, click “near a street address,” type in your address, and choose “1 mile.” (Sorry, Canadians, I have yet to find a .ca that performs this trick.) If you’re lucky and the database gods are smiling on you (the site is temperamental), Qwest will promptly reveal how many businesses there are within a one-mile walk of your front door. Call this your Walkshed Index, your Burley Score.

Ours, as I said, is 248. There are two hundred and forty eight places where my family can do business within a mile of home, not counting public facilities. That number is not remarkably high: the walkshed index at my downtown office address is 6,623. Nor is it remarkably low: one suburban family I know has a score of 0. But it means that living car-free is more viable for us than it would be for many families.

What’s the Burley Score where you live?

P.S. More than one quarter of car trips in the United States are shorter than one mile, as we noted in Seven Wonders. One quarter!

P.P.S. Realtors provide detailed information to prospective home buyers on schools and resale values. They could as easily report the Walkshed Index-—high scores translate into thousands of dollars of potential savings in fuel and car payments.

P.P.P.S. According to one map-making friend, creating walkshed maps and yellow pages would be a relatively simple Google Maps “Mash Up.” Anyone know of such a tool? Anyone volunteer to do this project? I’d love to have a detailed map stowed in the “glove box” of our Burley of all 248 businesses in my home zone. (I can get close with the Qwest online directory, plus the cool mapping tools at Map24, Google Local, and Windows Live Local. But these tools are designed for car drivers, not walkers.) Ideally, I would want a walking map or PDA application that shows me the whereabouts of public restrooms, water fountains, bike racks, curb cuts, bus stops, and benches. Besides, the Qwest tool is clunky and imprecise. (My total score of 248 is inexplicably less than the sum of all the categories of establishments listed above!)

UPDATE: A reader points out (in comments) that Canada411.ca will calculate a metric version of the Burley Score. Leave "category" blank, choose 1 or 2 kilometers, enter your address, and you're set. I calculated a 2-kilometer Walkshed Index of almost 7,000 for  an address in Vancouver's West End.

A Frank Look at Chinook

For those of you following the lamentable state of the Klamath River fisheries, there's a first-rate op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. He writes:

We expect the PFMC to take the only action it can to protect the salmon: reduce harvest. After all, cutting harvest has been the major response to declining salmon runs for the past 20 years. We accept that burden year after year with the hope that some day habitat -- the Big H -- will be addressed with the same conviction that we have shown in reducing harvests.

We are not in this mess because of harvest. Our harvest management process works.

The upshot, as you can probably guess, is that the only way to ensure the salmon will persist in the Northwest is to address the thorny and issues that degrade salmon habitat. Without suitable habitat the salmon runs dry up and fishermen bear the economic brunt of decisions that were made literally and figuratively upstream from them. A fair approach would take a hard look at irrigation, dams, development, and all the other contentious problems that affect salmon habitat--"the big H." Or as Frank puts it:

Salmon recovery begins and ends with the Big H.

California Rolls its Own Kyoto?

I don't know much about this, really, but the headline alone seems pretty auspicious:

Breakthrough plan to cut greenhouse gases
Goal is to reduce carbon dioxide 25% by 2020

Apparently, advisors to Governor Schwarzenegger--with the backing of California legislators--just came out with a 1,300 page report that details more than 50 strategies for reducing the state's climate-warming emissions.  Included among the strategies is a CO2 cap-and-trade system, similar to the European Union's carbon market. 

It's hard to overstate how huge a step that would be:  without a hard cap, any individual steps to reduce emissions might be offset by increases somewhere else in the state.  Plus, tradeable credits help ensure that the least expensive greenhouse gas reductions come first--which is the smartest way to sequence those kinds of investments, since the early steps wind up saving money in short order, which in turn helps finance deeper cuts later on.  Of course, if neighboring states don't follow suit, some major CO2 emissions -- particularly for generating electricity -- may just be pushed into a state with no such caps. Still, it's a start.

This is still just a proposal, obviously -- there's a lot of work left to be done before any of it becomes reality.  But it's definitely good news.

Defining Poverty

The New Yorker ran a great article by John Cassidy last week, discussing what it means to be "poor" in a nation as prosperous as America. The upshot: Cassidy recommends that the US replace the official poverty line -- first adopted in 1969 and adjusted for inflation ever since -- with a "relative" income standard that tracks how many people earn less than half the median income.  I think he makes an interesting case, and some important points.

As should be obvious, poverty is a surprisingly difficult concept to pin down.  The official US poverty line -- the level of income that separates "poor" from "non-poor" -- is pretty arbitrary; it's more a quirk of history than a useful distinction in the real world.  Arguably, the poverty line could be higher (on the grounds that it's pretty chintzy) or lower (on the grounds that poor people in America might be relatively well-off in some countries).  It's also inflexible: the poverty line is fixed all across the country, no matter what the local cost of living is. It's bad enough being below the poverty line in, say, rural Oregon; but living in Manhattan below the poverty line might leave you with no money for anything besides rent, if that.  And the official poverty line only looks at pre-tax income, so it doesn't consider tax payments, nor at some forms of income (such as Earned Income Tax Credits).

Just as vexing is the fact that the economy keeps changing in ways that the poverty measure can't account for.  Food, for example, is much cheaper than it used to be, relative to our incomes; and consumer goods are cheaper still.  So a poverty wage will buy a lot more food and, say, stereos than it used to.  But the cost of medical care and, in some places, housing have gone up faster than inflation -- both for structural reasons, and because (for medical care, at least) the quality has improved. These things don't matter so much year-to-year; short-term changes in the poverty rate usually provide a pretty good gauge of how people at the bottom of the earnings ladder are faring.  But long-term trends in poverty rates are less meaningful.  It's hard to compare how "poor" someone at the poverty line is in 2006 with how "poor" a comparable person might have been in 1980, or 1970.  This isn't to suggest that US poverty now is any better or worse than it used to be -- just that it's different.  But the poverty line doesn't register those differences.

As the article points out, these are just a few of the problems with an "absolute" poverty standard (ie., one that's based on a fixed dollar amount, adjusted for inflation every year). Another problem is that, as sociologists have discovered, the social ills that accompany poverty are largely the result of "relative" deprivation -- that is, if you feel poorer than the people around you, your health and happiness tend to suffer.  Wide income disparities reduce "subjective well-being" and increase the risk of dying from a wide variety of causes, from car crashes to cancer.  Nobody knows, exactly, why relative deprivation should cause such effects; but it does.  (It may be that we're hard-wired to feel more stress when we perceive ourselves to be of lower social rank, just as baboons and other primates do.)

I'm not ready to abandon the US poverty line quite yet.  But it would be useful if the US Census bureau were to track income inequality more rigorously, and report on it as widely as they report on the poverty rate.  That way we'd get information about both absolute and relative deprivation -- and a fuller picture of a set of trends that deserve way more attention than they typically get.

Tidepool Editor's Pick: Comeback for the Klamath?

Three strong and informative pieces on Oregon’s battered Klamath River ran in Sunday’s papers. All of them, especially an article in the Washington Post, are worth reading.

Both the Oregonian and the San Francisco Chronicle frame their stories around the economic impacts of the Klamath situation: How the depleted and polluted river -- which the Chronicle says may be the West Coast’s sickest -- has offered up a record low of chinook this year, which could lead to a ban on fishing.

Last week, hundreds of fishermen from Santa Rosa, California to Astoria, Oregon protested the proposed ban. Oregon congressman David Wu threatened to dump smelly salmon carcasses on the steps of federal agencies in Seattle, and Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski tabled an emergency summit on the situation. He plans to seek disaster aid for the fishermen if the ban goes through (and shore up support as he faces an increasingly difficult reelection fight). The economic cost for Oregon alone could total $40 million.

The Washington Post approaches the story from a hopeful angle. "For the first time in the nearly eight decades since the river was dammed, Indians and commercial fishermen, environmentalists and federal fish scientists agree that there are sound reasons to believe in the comeback of a river that once supported the third largest salmon runs on the West Coast."

Amidst the fishing commotion, as the Post explains, two decisions came down from the federal government last week that bode well for the future of the Klamath and all who depend on it. In crisis lies opportunity, as it’s said.

Finally, an interesting bit of trivia about the Klamath:

In 2002, the Post reports, Karl Rove was instrumental in making sure the river irrigated drought-stricken crops, which led to low flows, which led to massive fish kills, disease and low spawning, which means less chinook for everyone now.

Former Tidepool publisher Seth Zuckerman provides useful insight into the Klamath’s woes here.

P.S. - Tidepool.org is Northwest Environment Watch's daily online news service. Sign up here.

Montana to Insurers: Cover The Pill

Late last week, Montana required that any insurance plan that covers prescription drugs generally may not exclude coverage for prescription contraceptives such as birth control pills. The Helena Independent Record reports.

 That’s big news because couples whose insurance covers contraceptives are more likely to choose the most effective forms (which tend to be expensive): pills, for example, rather than condoms alone. And better contraception means fewer unintended pregnancies and abortions. It also means that more children will be born wanted.

Among Cascadian states, California and Washington already require equal treatment for prescription contraceptives: California, by law; Washington, by ruling of the state Insurance Commissioner. In Montana, the action came in a binding legal opinion issued by the state’s Attorney General. Excluding contraceptives from prescription drug plans is sex discrimination, AG Mike McGrath concluded. The rule has the force of law unless it’s overturned by the legislature or a state court. The legislature is unlikely to do so: the state senate approved a bill to ensure equal coverage for contraceptives last fall, although the state house did not join them. It’s unlikely, therefore, that both houses would pass a law that reversed the AG’s ruling.