Ann Mesnikoff Last month we welcomed the significant step the Obama administration took to slash pollution and oil consumption by putting new cars on a path to higher efficiency and emitting less climate-altering carbon pollution.
Ensuring today’s and tomorrow’s technologies are put to work to reduce how much oil it takes to travel a mile is critical, but we won’t move beyond oil if we continue to drive at a rate of nearly three trillion miles per year. Even cleaner cars will get stuck in traffic, consume oil (unless they’re electric!), waste time, and pollute.
This week, Sierra Club’s Virginia Chapter released its visions for a 21st Century Green Transportation plan for Virginia (PDF). This vision tackles that other side of the equation – reducing how many miles Virginians drive no matter what they are driving.
The chapter released its vision while Virginia Governor McDonnell is holding a transportation conference with the theme of “Gateway to the World.” The Chapter notes that the governor’s plan is to “spend billions in borrowed money building major, unneeded and destructive roadways. A better title might be ‘Highways to more Gridlock.’”
The chapter’s report lays out a vision for a smarter, cleaner transportation and more livable communities for the Commonwealth:
We envision Virginia’s residents enjoying a healthy, vibrant and prosperous quality of life, living in communities where they work, learn, shop and enjoy recreations and cultural amenities without depending on the automobile and the fossil fuel it burns. Be they urban, suburban, or rural, their communities will be attractive with open and green spaces. They will be pedestrian and bicycle friendly with internally connected streets. And they will be connected to other communities by transit systems, passenger and freight rail, bicycle paths, and uncongested roads.
The problem is that building more highways and making existing highways wider is driving Virginia’s transportation future. Using nicknames like “McDonnell’s Folly” (a new four lane highway), the “Zombie” Route 29 Western Bypass, A Can Opener to the Countryside and a new “Truckway,” the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter highlights the Bad and Unnecessary projects being pushed now in McDonnell’s plan and suggests alternative to each of these projects that will increasing transportation choices.
According the chapter, the old transportation planning ways of building more roads and widening highways didn’t work: “It only led to more sprawl, and more congested roads and some of the worst traffic in the country.
“Virginia needs to focus more on moving people and goods, and less on moving more cars and more trucks,” said Roger Diedrich, Smart Growth and Transportation Chair. “We cannot simply drive our way out of congestion. We need to make smart investments in more public transit, and bicycle and pedestrian friendly communities. In addition, transportation planning and community planning need to be closely coordinated.”
This is a vision every state can embrace!
