The General Contractors Association of New York today named the 10 worst bridges in New York City. They’re definitely a shabby lot. But it’s actually a little unfair to present this as a case of city government falling down on the job. The Bloomberg administration has actually been very attentive to maintaining and improving bridges and making sure the old crappy ones don’t fall down. But after Giuliani was more or less negligent on the matter they had a big job and these are some of the spans that are still much in need of TLC. Plans are even in motion to replace the worst the bridge on the list (click through to satisfy your overwhelming curiosity and see what it is).

10. Major Deegan Ramp to 153rd Street/Cromwell Avenue (Southbound)

9. 150 St Over Belt Parkway

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Scientists have known for quite some time that highway air pollution has many harmful effects. As we noted a few weeks ago, it can cause premature births and DNA damage. Also among the established effects are heart attack and stroke. But a new study sheds light on what’s actually happening, and why pollution causes high blood pressure. The culprit, it turns out, is the small particulate stuff spewed out in large quantities by trucks.

An article in Time today announces the findings:

Scientists at the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Robert Brook, found that [polluted air] can increase your blood pressure, and cause unhealthy changes in your blood vessels that last for hours and perhaps even days. […] [Study] participants were exposed in the lab to the same amount of particulates and ozone that would be found near a local highway. People who breathed in polluted air registered higher blood-pressure readings a short time after exposure and their blood vessels showed impairment as long as 24 hours later.

The scientists developed a rather granular, so to speak, understanding of what’s happening in these cases–the air pollution is, oddly enough, automatically setting off a fear reaction in the body:

First, the fine matter triggers changes in the central nervous system, causing a switch from the more controlled regulation of body processes to a more instinctive, automatic fight-or-flight response. This revs up the heartbeat and causes blood pressure to spike as the body may be responding to the presence of foreign, potentially dangerous particles in the air.

It’s all fairly graphic stuff, and the effects are persistent:

Once the immediate onslaught of pollution is gone, blood pressure drops back down. But the damaging effects persist. Particulates can lodge deep in the lungs, where they activate another process - inflammation, which kicks in over the 24 hours after exposure. The inflammatory response can stiffen blood vessels and cause longer-term damage to blood-vessel flexibility and their ability to absorb changes in blood flow from the heart. Weakened blood vessels can increase the risk of heart disease or stroke.

Now, of course, the point is not to rev up urban hypochondriacs into an inconsolable tizzy. Most healthy people can deal with this kind of low-grade physical stress. But a lot of people–young, old, infirm, or simply vulnerable for whatever reasons–can’t, and the fact remains that the more we understand, the worse this stuff seems to be. Regulations and pollution trends are moving in the right direction, fortunately. But the steady trickle of unnerving studies like this is just impetus to move that process along faster.

During the Beaver Cleaver era of American history, it was almost impossible to conceive of a bad road–after all, paving things over was synonymous with “improvement.” Sadly, planning mistakes made at highway speed back then will require a huge amount of effort and money to undo today. But as we discussed in an earlier article, doing so is often the best decision a city can make: razing an ill-conceived highway can have huge social, economic, and aesthetic pay offs for a city. And if it’s done right, it can actually improve traffic flow.

Due to efforts of organizations like the Congress for the New Urbanism–which has made and eloquent case for urban freeway removal (we’re echoing a few of their top candidates )–this idea is starting to go mainstream. A number of US cities are poised to follow the examples set by Portland, Milwaukee, and San Francisco and start knocking down poorly planned roads. Here are seven elevated highways doomed to meet the reaper at some point in the not-to-distant future, and views of how their respective cities might look like after they’re gone:

Cleveland: West Shoreway

Today, the West Shoreway freeway divides downtown and west Cleveland from Lake Erie and makes walking between the city center and, say, the Browns Stadium or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame unpleasant at best. The city, working with the Ohio Department of Transportation, has been pushing for a transformation of its waterfront for years and the Shoreway remains the major obstacle. The current plan is to take down the old road without building a replacement. Instead the route will be modified into a pedestrian-scaled avenue, including new and renovated parks, a beach, new housing and offices.

One reason this is possible is that Cleveland’s population has been shrinking in recent decades and is now about half of what it was in 1950. The bright side of that is that the city has more flexibility and potential for redevelopment–as planners hope will the new lakefront boulevard will demonstrate.

Before:

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Big, shocking numbers attached to diffuse phenomena are weird — one reads them and kind of goes, “Hmm, that’s a lot!” But there are no collapsing skyscapers to look at on tv, and after a moment of trying to figure how to react, one tends to go back to one’s Wii Bowling or whatever.

Consider that, in the past 14 years, speed limits higher than 55 mph and our strange tolerance of the dangers of cell phone use while driving together may have cost the country more than 25,000 lives and more than a trillion dollars. Even by the large-livin’ standards of this country, that’s quite a toll from two perfectly preventable causes. But… yeah.

The reason we’re hitching these two phenomena together is that have both been in the news this week–alarming stories about the unexpected and preventable toll of each–and that they also seem to be similar in some fundamental respect. (More on that latter thought presently.)

This morning, the NY Times ran a front page story about how in 2003 some miserable stooges at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration iburied plans for a long-term study of the safety implications of driving while using cell phones and also deep sixed a fact sheet that already made a pretty strong case it was unsafe. They did this for bureaucratic reasons–afraid that they’d run afoul of Congress and might endanger their funding.

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From the FT’s excellent Energy Source blog comes this interesting exchange with Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at the well-respected Canadian bank CIBC. Rubin thinks that oil prices are going to go much, much higher and that this will bring about some enormous changes in our collective behavior patterns–whether we’re interested in changing or not.

For instance, the globalized economy? Fuggedaboutit, says Rubin–at least in recent form:

It wasn’t that long ago - maybe four or five years - that today’s depressed [oil prices] would’ve been described as an all time high. If what was an all-time high only five years ago is where oil trades in a very deep recession, where does oil trade going forward?

Once we get into triple digit [oil] prices, what we find is it’s no longer compatible with a global economy… distance costs money, and things that we thought made a lot of sense–like importing food or steel from China–cease making sense. [...] We’ve already seen evidence that China was losing advantage in the North American steel market because it wasn’t economically feasible to ship it across.

If he’s right, all the debates in the US about changing behavior through gas taxes and other forms of driving taxation are going to look more and more perfunctory. You’ll remember that last time oil was in “three digit” territory–about a year ago–gas was over $4 a barrel. And America was coming unraveled. There was a flood of stories in magazines and newspapers about people who just couldn’t afford to commute anymore. Not incidentally, the housing market also simultaneously melted down in a lot of those places (like San Bernadino and Riverside counties in California).

That was all at $120/barrel. Here’s a question: What would $240/barrel look like in these United State? We will only venture to say, “Much different than today.” And with a lot, lot of pain involved.

Of course, Rubin might be wrong. But, given the stakes, our thought is that it probably makes more sense to plan for his scenario–one in which oil is increasingly scarce and becomes very expensive–and then enjoy our wonderful plethora of options if it turns out he was mistaken.

GM is hanging its corporate future on the Chevy Volt. That’s a great honor for a vehicle. So why does the eco-friendly would-be savior car look so incredibly pissed off?

When the Volt’s fiercely peeved appearance was noted by commenter over at Jalopnik a few days ago, a fellow commenter pointed to a study finding that people like aggressive looking cars. For example, the BMW 5-series.

But, then again, the BMW 5-series is a screw-the-world mobile. You don’t drive it with any pretensions that it’s socially responsible. It’s all about boosting your individual status by representing wealth and a certain level self-regard and arrogance (not judging, just saying.) So, say, a Camaro should look angry (and it does!).

A better reference point for the Volt, however, would probably be the Toyota Prius. To say the least, this is a car that has established its marketplace cred as an environmentally friendly machine. As noted in a 2007 NY Times story, a major motivation for buyers is the boost in social capital they believe they get for owning one: “The Prius has become, in a sense, the four-wheel equivalent of those popular rubber ‘issue bracelets’ in yellow and other colors — it shows the world that its owner cares.” It is a totally different route to boosting your status and creating a social identity than owning a BMW 5-series.

In short, the Prius is the green car done right. And have you ever seen such a happy, well-adjusted automobile?

So, uh, just what the hell is GM thinking?

While the statistics on the economy remain stomach-churningly bad, the transportation numbers in this country just keep getting better and better.

First we learned (and kept learning), that Americans are driving less. Then we found out that traffic congestion is down a whopping 30 percent in our cities. Then today, the government announces that there were fewer traffic fatalities in 2008 than in any year since 1961 — a time when Leave It Beaver was prime time programming, “nickelodeon” referred to a movie theater, and country’s population was half of was it is today. Deaths also fell by nearly 10 percent from 2007 levels, from 41,059 to 37,313.

The fact that people are driving less is certainly relevant here. But total miles driven fell only 3 percent in 2008–or one-third as much as road deaths–so that hardly accounts for the whole drop. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggests (on his blog!) that increased seatbelt usage is the primary reason. But, again, seatbelt usage wasn’t much different than it was in 2007.

Here’s an another possibility. We know that small reductions in vehicle travel can yield hugely outsized benefits. For example, that 3 percent drop in vehicle miles traveled on American roads last year producing the 30 percent drop in urban congestion. As economist Joe Cortright explains, it’s a classic “tipping point” effect. Perhaps this outsized drop in fatalities is part of the same dynamic — less congested roads are generally safer, after all.

(Photo via: CompleteAll)

In January, US motorists logged a total of 222 billion road miles. That’s 7 billion fewer–about 3% less–than in January 2008.

Ohio saw a stunning 10 percent drop in vehicle miles traveled, whereas the western U.S. showed a fractional rise.

Some of this regional variation tends to be weather related, but the overall dynamic is clear and seems to be primarily related to the recession. After all, taking 600,000 or so commuters off the road month after month really adds up.

As we’ve learned recently, even very small reductions in miles driven can have outsized effects in reducing traffic congestion, which is a good thing for everyone. But the big question remains whether there is a structural element to all this–might Americans continue to drive less, even after (if?) the economy recovers?

There’s some reason to hope they will.

While there’s not much supporting evidence yet, it’s also not to hard to come up with an argument for why it could happen: consumption is falling and in percentage terms probably won’t ever return to it’s recent norms (Paul Volcker, among others, endorses this idea.) Ultimately that means few shopping trips, fewer car purchases, and fewer vacations. Automobile ownership rates will probably decline a bit, and transit use will probably keep ticking upward. Together with some form of VMT tax or congestion pricing in years ahead, that could (theoretically, anyway) be enough to keep Americans’ road mileage below recent highs.

If true, what does this mean? Probably that we should be thinking less about building new roads than repairing our current ones and improving our transit networks.

Last year, vehicle travel on all streets and roads in the U.S. fell to the lowest level since 2003, according to the Federal Highway Administration. The annual total dipped below 3 trillion miles after first crossing that threshold in 2006. Travel in the month of December dipped a modest 1.6 percent, saving about 5 billion gallons of gas.

The cause of the decline has been hypothesized to be some combination of high gas prices for most of the year, millions of people getting fired from their jobs, and a fuzzy sense that we’re undergoing a cultural shift away from car-centric lifestyles. (It would have began on or around December 2007.)

A few specifics from the report:

• In the month of December all of the largest declines in miles were in the Pacific Northwest, with Oregon falling 15 percent and Washinton 11 percent. But that had more to do with snowstorms than it did with anything else.
• In the northeastern US, which had benign weather, December travel was actually up marginally over 2007 levels.
• The declines were, not surprisingly, most dramatic in June when gas prices were highest.
• It seems reasonable to think that without the crummy economy the number of miles driven nationally in December would have been back on trend.

With this in mind, gas prices and the recession seem to be driving the action much more than any cultural evolution, real or imagined.

From the Department of Uncomfortable Reads comes this effort by Middle Eastern laddie magazine UMen to enumerate the top ten reasons why “Women Can’t Drive.” The conceit would be tricky to pull off even in a part of the world where women have the universal right to do so, but the Jordan-based Maxim imitator–by all appearances honestly trying to be provocative and funny without being antisocial–doesn’t let that hold them back. For instance, the list begins with this Wilde-esque observation:

10. Their Dogs Occupy the Front Seat - For some reason, women like to have their dogs in the car. And that’s ok, to some extent. But when it starts to become a distraction, then that’s the issue. [...] One bimbo riding on the lap of another bimbo equals one big reason women can’t drive.

It continues on to point out that the ladies don’t know the difference between a car and an iPod (”they don’t realize… pressing shuffle doesn’t automatically park the car”) and lack “the driving gene.”

It’s probably unnecessary, but we feel compelled to point out that women are actually safer drivers — in the US they die or suffer serious injury behind the wheel at less than half the rate of men (12,747 highway fatalities for femails compared to 29,722 for males in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available). On somewhat shakier ground there’s also this BBC story declaring “hormones make women safer drivers.”

The timing is kind of unfortunate, too — what with recent events reminding us of how dark the implications of Middle Eastern chauvinism can be.

Click on the image below (after the jump) for a pop-up, full-sized version of the UMen item.
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