Can We Fix Our Traffic Crisis

Her voice lowered and the words oozed out a syllable at a time, "We do NOT want to become like Miami." I knew then that our conversation had ended.

I had been chatting with an acquaintance who lives in Fort Myers about the proposed I-75 widening, and we both agreed that traffic conditions on the interstate north of Naples had become intolerable. The $450 million cost to six-lane the roadway and almost $1 billion price tag to 10-lane it would make this one of the region's largest public works projects ever, but she believed we have no choice.

The entire metropolitan area of Southwest Florida really has only two north-south corridors linking its cities, and U.S. 41 is beyond hope of increasing significantly in capacity. The Southwest Florida Expressway Authority is seeking to recover costs through toll lanes, which would ease the shared pain. These would offer drivers the choice of presumably higher-speed travel on two tolled lanes or the use of four toll-free but more congested lanes. Ultimately 10 lanes would be needed.

My mistake was to suggest that the widening was, at best, a 10-year deferral of today's congestion, and what is needed is a whole new strategy for dealing with traffic that is based on land use, not incremental paving programs. The offending word was "density"-to be precise, much higher density development than is allowed now in Lee and Collier counties.

I had only just begun to explain the principles of Smart Growth and the strategy of moving people, jobs, services and amenities closer together when she recognized where the conversation was going. Her reaction was visceral. Density meant "high-rise," and that could only mean intense urban development. And that would mean that in a matter of only a few years, the madness, the chaos, the pressure-packed existence of Miami life would descend upon our tranquil Gulf Coast like a bad dream.

Had I been able to continue the discussion, I would have insisted that Southwest Florida already is like Miami, circa 1960. And if we continue in the current mode of seeking the salvation of our mobility through expressways, flyovers, monitored on-ramps or any of the multiplicity of devices in the highway engineer's bag of tricks, then we can be assured of becoming the modern-day Miami of Florida's west coast.

Miami followed the same track that we're on today. For the first 75 years, it was primarily a low-density city of single-family neighborhoods. As traffic engulfed the local streets, it was decided that the Palmetto Expressway was needed to relieve the pressure on north-south urban arterials. When that collapsed in the 1980s, the new Florida Turnpike extension-all 10 lanes of it-was built to relieve pressure on the Palmetto. Now that is failing, and there is nowhere else to pave more lanes.

Like the threatened sensitive lands and well fields of eastern Collier and Lee counties, the Everglades of west Miami-Dade and Broward counties sharply restricted new road building. Meanwhile, Miami's decades-long expressway-building strategy accomplished one major outcome-the continued sprawl of low-density subdivisions to the western, southern and northern reaches of the Gold Coast.

This is where the morality tale of Miami comes to an object lesson for the west coast. No amount of road building will solve the traffic crisis that is overwhelming urban America. It didn't in Miami, and it won't in Lee and Collier counties. That is because the low-density pattern of single-family homes in districts of purely residential use creates an absolute dependence on private automobiles. In both Miami and Fort Myers, more than 97 percent of all vehicular trips are made in private cars. (The rest are by mass transit or bicycle.)

Every day, the typical single-family home generates up to 14 automobile trips. The average household in Miami currently has more than three cars. The brutal but inescapable reality is that even if population hadn't increased in the past 10 years, traffic congestion would still have gotten worse, because the number of automobiles registered per household has grown faster than the population, and vehicle miles traveled each year by the typical motorist has grown twice as fast as the population. Since 2000, the average urban American shopping trip for groceries, household items or personal goods has lengthened from three to more than seven miles. We are spending more time in our cars, traveling farther and more often than ever before.

This utter dependence on the automobile that has resulted from the way we build our cities is at the root of our traffic congestion problems. Since we insist on building more of the same sprawling suburbs and are running out of road-building solutions, there's an inevitable admonition concerning traffic gridlock: "Get used to it." Put another way, the modern American low-density city is unsustainable.

Our cherished, single-family-home lifestyle is the American dream and the envy of much of the world's population, but one central myth about it is that providing urban services to low-density residential development costs less than to high-density housing. Florida's Department of Community Affairs commissioned a study in 1998 of the costs of sprawl from Palm Beach to Miami. The study, by Robert Burchell of Rutgers University's Center for Urban Policy Research, found that the average South Florida single-family home paid $1 in property taxes for every $3 in services it received. In contrast, the study found that high-density (more than 50 units per acre) residential, commercial and high-intensity mixed-use developments paid $5 in ad valorem taxes for every $1 in municipal and county services received. In Lee County, a similar study found that only waterfront homes, high-density and commercial uses pay their way, or better, in taxes.

Given the rise in the cost of urban land (a 50-foot-wide, single-family residential lot in a good Miami neighborhood can cost more than $500,000), you can add to low-density development's detriments a mounting crisis of affordable housing.

The answer to this dilemma is, as I tried to tell my friend, a radical change in land-use policy for our cities. Mixed use-the vertical integration of housing over retail and office-at high densities with ground-level pedestrian connections along tree-shaded streets is the old-new vision. "Old" because, for the first 4,000 years of city building, the constraints of time and travel on foot and horse-drawn cart forced a compact, high-density urban form. These cities remain livable and desirable after centuries, while our first tier of suburban low-density housing built pre-World War II are in increasing distress. It is "new" in that many are now rediscovering the appeal of an urban, connected, interactive lifestyle that mixed-use neighborhoods can provide.

Radical change does not include the elimination or displacement of low-density neighborhoods; they will remain and be vigorously protected by their residents and elected officials. It does mean that we must encourage the building of selective concentrations of high-density housing, mixed with offices, amenities and services that can be connected by mass transit systems along center-city spines of arterial roadways.

Interestingly, the vestiges of such systems are taking shape in places like the Bay area around San Francisco. Traffic conditions have become so unmanageable that firms now compete for skilled employees by offering them free personalized bus transportation between home and work. Google, in Mountain View, Calif., has developed a network of buses and routes to shuttle employees that has been called the most sophisticated of any mass transit system in America, public or private. With more than 30 buses and a network of 40 stops along 230 miles of routes, this perk is rated by many employees as preferable to higher pay or increased healthcare benefits.

Compare this free service to the fact that the average household in Atlanta now pays more annually for transportation than for housing-residents are moving farther out from the city to find affordable housing and making longer commutes-and the appeal becomes clear.

Another movement adding to the dimension of high-density housing demand is the emergence of a lifestyle that appeals to both the young and elderly that center cities are aggressively pursuing. The aging of America is putting a strain on employers who are competing for the best and brightest college graduates. By 2012, the American workforce will be losing more than two workers for every one it gains. The cities that can attract the highly educated and mobile 24-to-35 age group (known to demographers as the "young and the restless" or the "creative class") will be the most successful competitors in the national and global economy. To appeal to this age group, the "coolness factor" or "hipness index" is being touted by cities including Milwaukee, Austin, Denver, Portland, Ore., and Tampa. The creation of urban places that score high on the "social capital," "after hours" and "vitality" indices are most appealing to this critical employee base. The mix of uses in a high-density, high-intensity environment where amenities are within walking distance is a crucial prerequisite.

Similarly, retirees will become a dominant demographic in America in the next decade. Once relegated to bucolic settings featuring duck ponds, many seniors are moving back to urban areas where they can take advantage of convenient access to amenities and be connected to the energy of the city. In Chicago, a new high-rise, continuing-care retirement housing development known as the Clare is attracting seniors who don't want to be put out to pasture. They are realizing that staying active and involved can add years to their life, and city living is the perfect elixir for them.