Would You Fall for It? [ST08]

in many of my videos especially when talking about the history of Suburbia I use clips from a 1954 propaganda film by General Motors entitled give yourself the green light the purpose of this film was to generate public support for an increase in funding for roads a campaign that ultimately culminated with the passing of the federal aid Highway Act of 1956. I find this film so interesting because it really is a snapshot of how the future of cars and highways was viewed in the post-war period in America and it was the source of many of the problems with American cities that I talk about on this channel and also the problems talked about by strong towns the non-profit organization that highlights the failures of the post-war North American development pattern but anyway let's take a look at life in the 1950s is the American dream of freedom on wheels an automotive age traveling on time-saving super highways Futurama's free-flowing channels of concrete and steel I love this quote it speaks about highways as this magical new technology that will bring freedom to everyone of course there are still people holding on to this idea today but most of us acknowledge that reality is quite different these free-flowing channels of concrete and steel look more like this jammed up with so much traffic that nobody is getting anywhere quickly when I think about highways especially elevated highways I think of them as this an Antiquated mid-century technology that never really lived up to its promised potential and when I'm on a high-speed train comfortably flying along at 300 kilometers an hour it's really hard to see highways as anything other than a washed up outdated technology but of course in the 1950s this was the future especially according to General Motors so here's the key message in this video we have become the nation on wheels with more motorized Mobility than ever dreamed of before though we have the greatest highway system in all the world it can't carry the mounting traffic of our growing greatness our growing greatness I love that little bit of American exceptionalism in there anyway it's funny to see that already in 1954 the roads weren't big enough to fit all the cars we now refer to this as induced demand where building more roads and highways generates more trips by car requiring even more roads and wider highways in a never-ending cycle or at least until the city goes bankrupt but this effect was known to urban planners as early as the 1930s when it was referred to as traffic generation of course this film doesn't talk about induced demand because it was made by GM and they love the idea that more people will drive because then they'll sell more cars that's like the entire point we're running out of Roads we didn't dream big enough yeah that's the problem not that you've built a car dependent system with no viable alternatives to driving and here's the crisis two-thirds of the way is now obsolete worn out inadequate in width inferior in condition capacity and safety sure these were good roads 30 years ago when they were laid out but nothing lasts forever I find this part very interesting because this is exactly what strong towns talks about so often it's not the cost of building the roads that is the biggest problem it's the ongoing maintenance expense especially the replacement cost of the infrastructure that tends to happen after about 30 years here this video acknowledges this problem the financial cost of the end of the first life cycle of automobile infrastructure of course their solution is for the government to pay for it all but we'll get to that later all over the county our Farm to Market roads are dying of old age not anybody's fault just a matter of time and not enough money to keep them up or make them modern most were built in the 20s the pitch here is that they need to improve their Farm to Market roads and this was certainly true at the time it's important to have good quality infrastructure to get products from where they're produced to where they're sold and even today many Highway projects are pitched as a way of speeding up Trucking but we now know that these Farm to Market roads aren't just used for Trucking suburbs and excerbs get built along the road and this induces huge amounts of traffic from personal vehicles my Infamous walk in Houston where I risk my life to walk 800 meters to a nearby luggage store was along this Strode which ironically is called Farm to Market 1960. this is one of those Farm to Market roads referred to in this video and it is used for Trucking but it's very obvious that the majority of the traffic here is not commercial trucks and if anything the trucks are being slowed down by all the personal vehicles and all those personal cars and SUVs are here because there's no other way to get around there isn't even a sidewalk along most of this strobe of course American cities never acknowledge that all these cars are slowing down Trucking instead they use the congestion as a justification to widen the supposed Farm to Market roads until they become asphalt covered strodes like this one strodes are found all over the U.S and Canada they are streets that are designed like roads and in doing so fail at being good at either one the Strode is a term coined by strong towns and I have a whole video about them and why they're a problem that you should watch if you're not familiar with them we pay for roads whether we have them or not only we pay more for them when we don't have them solid milk wear and tear on equipment wasted time soaks everybody from the farmers right up to the family budget we're growing more crops we're all more people grown more cars and trucks trouble is we've just not been grown enough more good roads again this may have been true at the time there very well may have been economic benefits that were being lost because the infrastructure wasn't good enough but there are diminishing returns too laying a high quality Road could help many aspects of the economy but if that road is used to encourage car dependent sprawl and the road is widened and turned into a Strode then it destroys that infrastructure investment and fundamentally gives the city a huge infrastructure liability that it can't afford the video goes on with obviously fake testimonials from various members of society but this one is the most interesting the small town Merchant [Music] our town has a population of 4002 except on weekends on Friday night and Saturday congestion hits our main arteries like a heart attack but customers passes by if they can't find a place to stop what brings up store sales today is parking space it's as important to volume as shelf space and display windows best investment a town can make lots of parking the place shown in this segment is clearly a traditional mixed-use walkable neighborhood this is the kind of place where in the past people would walk to the local shops the mass adoption of automobiles absolutely did devastate these places and while the quotes in this video are obviously scripted parking was a problem for shop owners in small town and suburb in cities of all sizes the situation is the same all snarled up you can see that the problem of downtown congestion and parking was already well known in 1954 but they didn't look at this and think hmm maybe it's not a good idea to try to bring everybody in here by car instead they tried to make more space for all the cars as Mrs America [Music] every day it gets worse shopping it's not just a matter of getting through the congestion it's impossible to find a place to park the fundamental fallacy here though is that you can't build enough parking to replace the number of customers you would get from foot traffic in a walkable neighborhood but that certainly didn't stop American and Canadian cities from trying that's why my hometown went from a place that looked like this to a place that looks like this the places where downtown people used to live were turned into places where suburbanites could park trying to attract car driving suburbanites to a downtown area by providing ample cheap parking is doomed to fail but North American cities literally destroyed their downtowns trying to make them car friendly hey pal load and unload buddy that's what to do like a bunch of sheep with 54 million vehicles on our streets and roads today 50 percent More Than Before the War by 1975 they say we will be driving 85 million I love how they refer to drivers as a bunch of sheep wake up sheeple There's A Better Way Forward than car dependency incidentally they said there would be 85 million cars on the road in 1975. the actual number was 106 million that's a lot of sheep five o'clock USA of course we now know that five o'clock USA looks nothing like this today it looks worse the car companies that made this piece of propaganda got everything they asked for and more and it didn't solve any of the problems mentioned in this video [Music] will you stop honking back we ain't going nowhere [Music] urban planners knew it at the time and we know it now you cannot build your way out of traffic congestion but many American cities have literally bankrupted themselves trying you think you got it made good job carnally paid for so you get a little home in the suburbs away from the city smoke out from the Shadows of the factory into the sun in clean air raise a few kids some flowers and vegetables the big dream coming true but it backfires into a pipe dream [Music] exhaust pipe dream every night it takes longer to get home wasting more time and gasoline no wonder everybody's acting so nervous what's a citizen gonna do the only solution to car traffic is viable alternatives to driving it was true in 1954 and it's true today [Music] recently conducted us arouse Nationwide thinking on how to plan and pay for the safe and adequate highways we need Highway experts wrote essays along with tens of thousands of others who already recognized the highway dilemma as one of our nation's most critical problems [Music] I am privileged to present the winner of the grand national award Robert Moses of New York Robert Moses New York City Construction coordinator is a world famous Highway planner a man who knows his business Robert Moses was the infamous Transportation planner in New York who destroyed huge swaths of the city mostly neighborhoods of people of color in order to build wide roads and highways there is way too much to say about this guy here but if you're interested the book The Power broker talks about his life and the absolute devastation he brought to New York City to make it car friendly incidentally this animation of what was bulldozed to build the Cross Bronx Expressway was made by segregation by design a website that documents the destruction brought to American cities for the construction of Highways as well as the reasons why some neighborhoods were chosen for bulldozing over others links to their website and socials are in the description [Music] a good parking space is any space close enough a good road is any road able to carry its daily traffic flow safely and adequately and it doesn't have to cost a million dollars a mile to be a good investment every stretch of farm and Factory to Market Road earns profits for all the nation and it's just good American Enterprise to put part of the profits back in the business this is a common justification for road building that's still used today that it brings economic benefits but this is only true up to a certain point and after that there are diminishing returns eventually it becomes a bad thing that too many people are driving and then politicians and Engineers quote these supposed billions of dollars that are being lost each year because of traffic congestion as a reason to build more highways but as more asphalt is created the future maintenance debt piles up and the city ends up with minimal or even negative economic benefit that they trade for massive future Financial liabilities our road builders now have the know-how to pour miracles of concrete through the air if supported by the proper financing they can lift traffic up over City congestion with elevated highways raised by an aroused public the Gowanus Expressway speeds over a densely populated area of Brooklyn without disturbing Life Below to deliver through traffic to the underwater tunnel to Manhattan foreign from the north the four-story street will soon be open with Promenade for pedestrians on top local traffic on the bottom and two one-way expressways in between here is four-story proof that our modern Highway planners with imagination and public support can solve our traffic problems of course with the power of hindsight we know that this Expressway did not solve New York's traffic problems in fact it likely made it worse by inducing more driving and reducing the number of destinations within walking distance of residents we can have our super highways in the sky fabulous futuristic forms like this Hollywood freeway interchange which sorts flowing traffic eight ways at once the way that highways are talked about in this video as some kind of future technology that will solve all traffic problems is exactly the same way that self-driving cars are talked about today this spectacular two-decked Viaduct snaking along the docks of Puget Sound through Seattle's busiest section has cut a 20-minute traffic battle to three minutes travel time that three-minute travel time didn't last long of course as more traffic was induced and the viaduct was torn down in 2019 removing this horrific Scar from Seattle's Waterfront many people favor toll roads like the New Jersey Turnpike financed by a bond issue another way to raise funds it's already paying itself off way ahead of schedule proving that many of us who drive will pay extra by the mile and pay every trip to travel a good road in the 1950s the Auto industry was still promoting the idea of toll roads but very soon after this they started to endorse only freeways which were called freeways because they were well free unfortunately many toll roads were converted to freeways after their initial construction costs were paid off which has left American states with massive maintenance bills because after about 30 years any road needs to be resurfaced and refurbished which typically cost more than the price to build it in the first place when that time comes everyone is left footing the bill whether they drive or not Pittsburgh is moving mountains and even relocating a railroad yard to get out of its traffic jam spoiler alert Pittsburgh still has traffic jams city and state tax money is matching federal funds to pave the way this is typically how road projects are funded in America city state and federal funds I've talked about this before in my video about the growth Ponzi scheme the problem though is that after this highway is completed it's turned over to the state or the city which is responsible for all future maintenance but once again 30 years later there's a huge maintenance liability that comes due and the local governments don't have enough money to pay for it because there's just too much expensive sprawling infrastructure Chicago is moving a city to build an eight-mile long expressway from the city limits to Michigan Avenue wide as a city block Into the Heart of the loop an eight-lane Miracle which will send traffic through the middle of the main post office building like a special delivery letter like a special delivery letter I I don't know why but this is so funny this freeway still goes through the old post office building by the way anyway Urban freeways like this are a terrible idea but as the video said this freeway is as wide as a city block and you know what you can put in a city block a city Block's worth of homes and businesses that can not only be useful destinations for people but places that pay property tax to the city so instead of having a productive City Block Chicago bulldozed it to build an expensive maintenance liability which of course also funnels huge volumes of cars into a city center that wasn't designed for it Chicagoans raised their share of the 92 million dollar cost by a bond issue interest in retirement to be paid for by Future revenue from motor fuel taxes backed up by property taxes borrowing money to finance expansion is traditional with Americans the time and money saved more than repays your investment if you wait to pay as you go you may not go at all to me this is the most interesting part of the video because this is exactly the problem that strong towns talks about today the fact that huge amounts of American Car infrastructure was built on debt with no reasonable way to repay it and with absolutely no consideration for future maintenance which again can be more expensive than building the infrastructure in the first place this infrastructure promoted car dependent urban sprawl low-density developments that bring in very little tax revenue compared to the amount of infrastructure required to support it this is the reason why so many American cities are bankrupt including Detroit is borrowing funds to build more miles of Expressway and build them today instead of years from now [Music] what they're talking about here is taking on debt to build infrastructure instead of building what you can afford to build building on debt can make sense if that infrastructure promotes developments that pay for the infrastructure and then some but these highways didn't and that's the problem today many American cities like Detroit are using federal funds to tear down freeways that they can no longer afford to maintain incidentally the U.S federal gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993. it's

stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon so when you hear federal funds know that it's coming out of General Revenue which means everyone is paying for these infrastructure projects not just drivers and since most local roads are paid for by property tax drivers are being heavily subsidized by those people who don't drive but that's a topic for a future video limited access highways without stop lights cross traffic pedestrians left turn Menace and dangerous intersections spacious roads of divided Lanes where free-flowing traffic can save time tires gas as well as lives the automobile industry got everything it wanted and it bankrupted American cities it also guaranteed that most Americans became completely car dependent unable to get around in any other way both because of the development pattern but also the fact that pretty much all the money was directed away from any Alternative forms of transportation and all of this the bulldozed neighborhoods the billions of dollars in taxes and debts and the walkable cities destroyed to build parking didn't solve the problems they were trying to solve if anything it made American cities even worse the go-ahead must be fought for on the side streets we must fight for it at every Crossroad widening out congested intersections rounding square corners for the wheels of the automotive age foreign we must boldly attack bottleneck and traffic jam with left turn lanes and modern interchanges Service Roads [Music] better loading facilities free ourselves from the ulcer route [Music] and from no place to park roads are dying of old age and come every spring the bottoms drop out yep you have to be careful driving the kids over these roads literally all these problems are still relevant today despite trillions of dollars being spent to solve them at some point people need to realize that building cities only for cars is never going to make these issues go away now there is another payment to be made on our freedom of movement it's the price for growing greater than our biggest dream today two miles of Highway are wearing out for everyone being built and tomorrow we'll have a million more drivers not counting those in the back seat this makes me wonder how many miles of Road are wearing out for every mile built in America today I suspect it's a lot worse than two to one it's your country to get the green light write your state capital write Washington D.C write your hometown officials postcard your newspaper editor call your radio and TV commentators support your Highway officials and when you vote vote for your right-of-way don't honk your horn raise your voice it's your country give yourself the green light now I completely agree with this part of the video do all that just for public transit and walkable cities instead of Highways and parking lots if you'd like to learn more about how automobile infrastructure and car dependency has destroyed American and Canadian cities I recommend watching my strong towns playlist and if you'd like to see all of my videos ad free and sponsor free I'd recommend watching them on nebula the streaming service with over 150 educational creators including me I release all of my videos to nebula early so you can watch them before they're on YouTube and without any ads of course there's a lot of content on there by me but there's also many other great creators as well as content found only on nebula such as nebula Originals mini documentaries exclusive to nebula and nebula classes Long format classes on all kinds of subjects taught by some of your favorite YouTube creators if that sounds interesting to you you can sign up now at nebula.tv not just

bikes I'd also like to thank my supporters on nebula and patreon who pay me to bring up the mistakes of the past because those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it if you'd like to support this channel go to nebula.tv not just bikes or patreon.com not just bikes

2023-01-12 07:23

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