Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Mobility vs. Access, Chesterfield vs. Manhattan

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James A. Bacon
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by James A. Bacon

Luke Juday, writing in his personal blog, “Mapping the Commonwealth,” picks up the cudgel against a recent Wendell Cox essay that I inveighed against in, “Subsidize It, and They Will Come.” While I focused on the idea that a metropolitan strategy of building your way out of congestion is fiscal folly, Luke bores in on an even more important point: Cox confuses mobility (lack of congestion) with access. I’ll let Luke take it from here:

Most people perceive the inconvenience of traffic in terms of how fast they can drive on a road, which is ridiculous. They ought to evaluate it in terms of their increased or decreased access to possible destinations. So yes, ten minutes of driving in Manhattan might barely get you a mile. But that mile driving radius gets you access to a million people, several million jobs, and tens of thousands of retail stores and restaurants.  Contrast that with suburban Richmond. Ten minutes of driving in Chesterfield County might get you geographically farther in any one direction (including time on side streets to get to destinations), but that only gives you access to less than a hundred thousand people, and not nearly the concentration of jobs or amenities.

Now, dig this. Luke applies a mapping algorithm to show how much territory you can cover in a 10-minute drive in Manhattan’s congested city streets versus a 10-minute drive in Chesterfield. Using the same tool to display Manhattan and Chesterfield on the same scale (I think Luke’s maps were on different scales), I generated the following. Here’s how far a ten-minute drive in Manhattan gets you:

manhattan

 And here is a 10-minute drive in Chesterfield:

chesterfield

No question, you can cover a lot more ground in Chesterfield. You’re flying along, top down on your car, wind flying through your hair, no crazed yellow taxis cutting you off, no crowds of pedestrians to wade through at every intersection. But at the end of the ride, you have access to a small fraction of the number of people, businesses and amenities that you would get in New York.

(Admittedly, parking is a nightmare in New York compared to Chesterfield. On the other hand, Manhattan provides transportation options — walking, biking, buses and the subway — that are either impractical or do not exist in Chesterfield.)

Cox dwells on the fact that density creates congestion. He is quite correct about that. But he ignores the fact that density also creates access. It’s access, not mobility, that is critical to economic growth and quality of life.

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11 responses to “Mobility vs. Access, Chesterfield vs. Manhattan”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    excellent dialogue!

    I would add – that sometimes – it’s not really how fast – it’s how long – it takes you to get to where you are going.

    we plan our departure time based on how long we think it will take to get to our destination and many of us – spend that entire trip looking at our watches and fretting about things that slow us down.

    I have an easy fix to it. I leave early – on purpose – I’ll build in a 15-30 minutes bubble… and if i get there early, I have a book or will screw around with my smartphone.

    I’ve known people all my life that if you say to meet you somewhere at a particular time – they are almost always late and every single time they have some “unexpected” thing that slowed them down.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that some of us were born a thousand years to early before transporter machines were invented…!!

    Oh , and the maps. you need two of them. one for ten minutes in non-rush hour and one for ten-minutes at peak rush hour. You’ll find that that 10 minute map in Manhattan probably is close to the same between peak and non-peak hour but in CHesterfield there would be 2 distinctly different maps.

    Another way to think about this – is LOS on the road segments for peak and non-peak hour.

    at peak hr there are more and more segments that degrade into LOS F but if you drove that same road at 9pm at night the LOS would be B or better.

    So what LOS should we be building for at peak hour?

    LOS F, by the way, is if you get stopped for more than one cycle at a light – like in a left-turn lane.

  2. JohnS Avatar
    JohnS

    “It’s access, not mobility, that is critical to economic growth and quality of life.”

    It all depends what you want to access. For a young buck like Luke I bet Manhattan is pretty alluring, but for a vast segment of the American populace it’s Chesterfield hands down. Sorry NYC hipsters- I don’t envy your trendy dining choices or the closet-sized apartment you’re renting for $2500/month. And yes I live in Chesterfield.

    Lifestyle choices can’t be left out of the discussion. This blog makes you sound like a liberal proclaiming what’s good for the goose is good for the gander

    And you miss the mark entirely by thinking of access vs. mobility as an either/or choice. Have you considered it possible that access is what makes Manhattan work and mobility is what works for Chesterfield?

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      John, I don’t prejudge whether access or mobility is more important. Cox does — he says mobility is better. The point that I am trying to make is that mobility does not necessarily provide superior access.

      As you point out there are lots of trade-offs involved. Different people have different preferences. The trick is, how do we know which trade-offs are the best for a given metro region? I argue that the market is a better judge than planners and politicians. Guys like Cox want to build more roads to support more low-density development. Environmentalists want to build more mass transit to support more high-density development. I’m agnostic regarding which is best. I think we ought to hold both highways and mass transit to a market test. Don’t build a project until there is sufficient demand that private-sector players are willing to risk their own money. Anyone can say anything in support of a project but until they put up their own money, it’s all hokum.

      1. larryg Avatar
        larryg

        the discussion is interesting because it follows in some respects how the DOTs view the issue:

        Functional Road Classification:

        Arterial Provides the highest level of service at the greatest speed for the longest uninterrupted distance, with some degree of access control.

        Collector Provides a less highly developed level of service at a lower speed for shorter distances by collecting traffic from local roads and connecting them with arterials.

        Local Consists of all roads not defined as arterials or collectors; primarily provides access to land with little or no through movement.

        now I do wonder – how the smart growth, mobility and access definitions might differ from the DOTs perspective.

        you walk into any store, any apartment, and business and virtually everthing that is in there got there :

        1. – by arterial highways from where ever the item was made to close to where it will end up.

        2. – the last little distance is done on connectors and local access roads.

        virtually everything we use and consume gets to us by truck over arterial roads that criss-cross the country – almost nothing gets produced locally.

        so my question is – is our current road system “smart”?

        or is it “wrong”

        or does it need to work differently for Smart Growth?

        I don’t think human access and mobility is worth a plug nickel if there is no food, drink, furniture, etc… commerce is more important than human-scale mobility and access. We could not live in cities without roads bringing in the things we need ….

        and yet we continue on a narrative that roads are the de-facto enemy of access and mobility… and we’d be better off prioritizing human access and mobility over commerce access and mobility.

        I don’t know the answer – but there seems to be obvious conflicts in the current value system of smart growth sometimes. roads are vital. A city without goods and services delivered from external sources is not a place to live.

  3. cpzilliacus Avatar
    cpzilliacus

    James A. Bacon wrote:

    Now, dig this. Luke applies a mapping algorithm to show how much territory you can cover in a 10-minute drive in Manhattan’s congested city streets versus a 10-minute drive in Chesterfield. Using the same tool to display Manhattan and Chesterfield on the same scale (I think Luke’s maps were on different scales), I generated the following. Here’s how far a ten-minute drive in Manhattan gets you:

    Jim, if you live on the island of Manhattan, you are probably taking transit, walking, biking, or taking a cab for some of those trips. In part because those are viable modes there, and in part because parking tends to be expensive and difficult in much of New York City (including Manhattan).

    In Chesterfield County, it is pretty likely that you are driving a private automobile.

    Consider this – as others have stated several times, the United States is two markets when it comes to transit – New York City (and some of its suburbs), and the rest of the nation. Here are some data points out of the American Community Survey that I looked up from American Fact Finder.

    Chesterfield County definitely falls into the rest of the nation category – almost 85% of residents drive to work – alone, and less than 1% used public transportation.

    Even in Arlington County, about 53% of workers drive alone, though 27.5% use public transportation (very high by U.S. standards).

    Compare and contrast with New York County, N.Y. (Manhattan). About 6.7% drove alone to work, and 58.4% took public transit, and over 21% walked to work.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      The thing you notice about very early mornings in New York is that the roads belong to the delivery trucks. All up and down the city streets are delivery trucks ….

      Now, the question is, could New York function without the streets and delivery trucks?

  4. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    You know… with all the hoopla about self-driving cars and zipcar, etc are we not thinking outside the box enough?

    “In the future, commute by copter”

    http://www.startribune.com/science/264064931.html?src=news-stmp

    see the first thing folks might think of is mini-helicopter carnage in the skies above but just like drones – mini-helicopters could go to a hover if they encountered “congestion”…. don’t think of them as “helicopters” – think of them as passenger-carrying drones where the only human involvement is when you select the destination.

    just think, for instance, how that ten minute window would change in a place like Richmond/Chesterfield is you could just copter yourself to your destination.. in what… 1/2 or even 1/10th the time?

    there are distinct advantages to passenger-carrying autonomous drones – in that you won’t have to deal with manually-operated helicopters by the kinds of idiots you see on the highways… the only traffic would be professionally operated helicopters and super-safe autonomous drones.

    Now… what the sky would look like at rush hour.??? probably like a scene from:

    http://youtu.be/D_FFRK7-PdY

  5. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Posted on behalf of Lynwood in Grayson:

    I realize that moving from a county north of Montgomery to Gwinnett County in Atlanta Metro is described well by the mobility vs access article. Gwinnett is about 10% smaller than my home county but the population is 20 times larger. There is a lot more stuff to do and things to see. Considering the entire Atlanta metro expands the opportunity even more. Two of my children also moved to Atlanta. My son won’t consider going back. He works for a venue management company and says things like ” After you’ve seen the Red Hot Chili Peppers 3 times , it’s not as exciting.” That’s another thing, big cities attract things that the home folks will drive 3 hours to see while we don’t have to make a major effort for the same things. Oh sure, there are some problems but you learn the workarounds. I had a heart attack about 14 months ago and was in the cath lab in 15 minutes. Major medical access in a short time. When I now drive around the rural areas I’m glad I didn’t live there. Time magazine had an article years ago about people who moved to New Hampshire for the low taxes but griped about the lack of services. Keeping rural hospitals open is an issue here in Georgia. I’m reminded of Tennessee Ernie Ford on “I Love Lucy” worried about the “wicked city women” . Cities are stereotyped as bad. Forgive the rambling but sometimes, like McGee’s Closet, you open a door and lots of stuff falls out.

    Regards,
    Lynwood in Grayson
    Alabama Expatriate

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Every place , urban and exurban has 3 types of roads – arterials, collectors and local access and medical centers are an excellent example of something you need all 3 types for.

    You want and need a well-functioning arterial road network- prioritized for mobility for access to good medical care on a timely basis.

    If we essentially decided to make medical centers as ‘places’ where we prioritize bike and ped over mobility and access.. we’d make huge mistakes.

    this is why I think the mobility and access discussion works to a false narrative.

    A medical center you cannot get to unless you live next to it or a couple of miles away is just not reasonable.

    when you find yourself in that ambulance – you want to get from where you are to that center – as fast as possible.

    we have conflicting wants and needs but cities of all places need arterial roads to function to support people’s needs.

    we all want to live on a cul-de-sac – both in the suburbs but also in the cities if you think about it.

    the 3-tiered road classification system – arterial, collector, and local access was developed in 1921 in response to questions about what the purpose of roads were – i.e. how should they be designed … for mobility or access…

    It’s not a state or local standard. It’s a national, international standard.

    Perhaps a good question to answer might be – one goes into the decision to site a Medical Center… what is needed in the way of infrastructure for a particular location to be a good location – for a medical center?

  7. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    (Cross-posted from an email thread started by Rob Whitfield. This comment comes from Randal O’Toole, transportation scholar with the Cato Institute:)

    I once did an inventory of businesses on a typical strip development in a moderately low-density suburb. I found nearly 400 consumer-oriented businesses in a 3.8-mile stretch. This included 22 grocery stores and all kinds of unusual businesses such as dance studios, skateboard shops, dog groomers, etc. See http://ti.org/vaupdate42.html

    These shops were all easily accessible by automobile with no congestion. Moreover, land and housing was cheap. Sure, you can might be able to reach 400 businesses within walking distance in some parts of Manhattan, but the variety of businesses would not be the same. Meanwhile Manhattan is a very expensive place precisely because it is so dense.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      Imagine all the things you do in your life in a day or week. Now, imagine doing them all via walking…(assume they are all nearby).

      people’s lives are scaled to a quicker tempo of mobility.

      we talk about “walking” as if it were no more of a time-consumptive activity than a car – such that you could conduct your entire life’s business – on foot, if you live in the “right” kind of a settlement pattern.

      there may be some places like this… It is said that 1/2 of more of the population of the US lives in “urban” areas but I’m a skeptic as to it being mostly the kind where you don’t have a car and you walk for everything.

      Take a place like Richmond. How much of Richmond is configured such that most of life’s activities are within walking distance.

      Take NoVa – some small percentage might be but the vast majority of it is as thoroughly car-oriented as the exurban rings around it.

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