Austin’s illness: Congestion
When first moving to Austin, the first thing Austinites told me was “BEWARE OF TRAFFIC!” . My initial thoughts were there’s no way it could be that bad, now after 4 years of living Austin all I can think is how naive and wrong I truly was. A survey conducted in 2017 found that 83% of Austin Drivers are unhappy with traffic. In a study done by the INRIX, Austin drivers spent an average of 47 hours in traffic congestion during the high traveling hours causing it to be ranked the 13th worst city in the United States and 42nd worst in the world. The infamous southbound interstate 35 was labeled 6th on the “Top 10 Worst U.S. Corridors” with an average speed of 23.4 mph during rush hour traffic accumulating up to 63 hours of delay. Austin located in Travis County has 989,291 currently registered vehicles and that number continues to grow meaning more vehicles on the already packed roads. The impacts of serve traffic in a city go beyond that of road rage. Austin’s traffic infection could soon lead to infections for all residents unless the infrastructure changes.
Traffic congestion has been labeled as one of the major factors in air quality degradation (Carr et al., 2002). More than 80% of air pollution in major cities is due to motor vehicle emissions. Vehicle emissions contain carbon monoxide, nitrogen, oxides, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and suspended particulate matter (Xue et. al, 2013). When congestion occurs the average speed on the road decreases resulting in a longer period for these emissions to occur. As stated prior the average Austin driver spends an average of 47 hours in congestion meaning 47 hours of pollution per driver through car emissions. Typically, the driving patterns experienced from traffic congestion result in vehicles frequently idling and engaging in more acceleration and deceleration events. In comparison to “cruise” conditions which had an average speed of 38–44 mph the increased accelerating and decelerating patterns in 13 mph congestion speeds showed up to 4-, 3-, 2- fold increases in Carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides respectively (Sjodin et al., 1998). To put this into perspective, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the average light duty vehicle exhaust emits 3.941 grams of carbon monoxide per mile(gpm), 0.350 grams of hydrocarbon, and 0.289 grams of nitrogen oxide. Congestion would lead to a 4 fold increase of carbon monoxide to 15.764 grams, while a 3 fold increase of hydrocarbons to 1.05 grams, and a 2 fold increase of nitrogen oxide results in 0.578 grams. The numbers only reflect the damage done by one car, multiply this by each car involved in traffic and the total emissions released increases drastically. These effects are also much greater in regards to heavy duty vehicles as its averages in free flow traffic are 21.352 grams of carbon monoxide per mile(gpm), 1.160 grams of hydrocarbon, and 1.416 grams of nitrogen oxide. This increased pollution becomes a significant health risk as humans are directly being exposed.
Traffic congestion has already been known to induce driver stress by increasing the feelings of time pressure but there are many more health risks. In major urban cities cardiovascular and other respiratory diseases have also been linked to particulate matter from car emissions being inhaled and transported to the respiratory tract (Volckens et al., 2015). Congestion increases total motorist exposure to traffic related air pollution during a tip (Bigazzi et al., 2015). As show in Table 1 the mean carbon monoxide exposure intensity and nitrogen oxide exposure intensity were 401.58 µg/hr (micrograms per hr) and 59.65 µg/hr respectively. If you were to multiply this by the 47 which is the average number of time spent in traffic a year the exposure intensity values are now 18,874.26 µg for CO and 2,803.55 µg NO per motorist inhaling the traffic polluted air. Increases in exposure are not only limited to motorists but also by residences that are nearby roads that experience heavy congestion. The lower vehicles speeds increase pollutant concentrations as congestion reduces the dispersion of particle matter (Benson. 1989). Without the normal traffic flow the particle matter stays and slowly disperses to the sides of the roads where nearby residents have increased exposure. Traffic generated pollutants are to known decrease exponentially with distance from the road and most studies show background pollutant levels reaching within 200–500 meters from the road (Baldauf et al., 2008). Many factors do play into this such as meteorology,and roadway design features. As a means of combating congestion and health hazards associated with it, the city of Austin has embarked on a campaign to promote healthier modes of transportation.
Solution:
Austin has set a goal of converting 7 percent of central-city trips from car to bike through addition of new capacity to Austin’s road system by 2020 (Andersen, 2017). Through a draft analysis done by the City of Austin, they predict that the addition of a protected bike lane network in the “Ring of Congestion” (Figure 3) would incline people to select bikes as their mode of transportation for 15% of the trips under 3 miles and 7% of 3–9 mile trips. Within the “Ring of Congestion” (Figure 2) the City of Austin reports that there are 160 thousand passenger vehicle trips that enter this area daily and of those trips 36% are less than 3 miles. This is consistent with an in person survey I performed on 16 students at the University of Texas who live on West Campus. Questions that were asked: What is your primary mode of transportation to Campus?, Follow up questions if they answered Car or Bus: Have you considered another form of transportation such as walking, biking, or electric scooter? and what is keeping you from changing? , Follow up questions for if they answered with biking, electric scooter, walking, or other : Has this been your mode of transportation throughout your time at UT and if not what made you change to your current mode of transportation?, finally the last question what is your primary mode of transportation to places other than UT? 25% answered walking as their primary mode of transportation to campus, 25% bus, 18.75% car, 18.75% biking, 6.25% electric scooter, and 6.25% moped. Of the 43.75% that answered car or bus, 85.7% considered another form of transportation such as biking, walking, or electric scooter. The majority choice was biking with responses as to why they did not switch being lack of bike lanes throughout west campus to provide safety and fear of bike getting stolen. With the rest 56.25%, 44% responded that this was not always their mode of transportation. All walkers and the moped user answered that they used the same mode of transportation throughout college. The electric scooter user changed to this form whenever they were introduced to Austin, while all 3 bike riders switched when more bike lanes were added to west campus. For the final question 62.5% responded with driving as their mode of transportation to other places while the rest took the bus. The findings from the survey support the plan being set forth by the city of Austin to increase bike usage for short trips through creation of a bike friendly infrastructure.
These results also reinforce my observations that I have had while living in West Campus. When I first moved to west campus there were no designated bike lanes or sidewalks with most roads resembling Figure 4 ; However, now that bike lanes have been added to Rio Grande St (Figure5) there has been an increase in the number of cyclists, skateboarders, manual scooters, and walkers.
The inclusion of safe bike infrastructure has also resulted in the the reduction of bicycle accidents. According to the Austin-Travis Country EMS accidents have decrease by one-third over the past 5 years . In 2012 a total of 587 bike accidents occurred, encouraging city officials to the proposal of the Austin Bicycle Master Plane resulting in added bike lanes leading to a drop in accidents by 20% (Bontke, 2017). Executive director of Bike Austin, Mercy Feris attributes the decline to the increase in protected bike lanes and number of cyclist stating “If you have more people riding their bike, motorists are more aware of them ”. With the expected increase of cyclists even companies like Uber have transitioned to providing bike services by partnering with Jump and promoting it as a smarter, greener, more accessible and friendlier option.
Bicycles are not the only mode of transportation that is seeing an increase with the rise of designated bike lanes. The inclusion of electric scooters by Bird and Lime Scooters that can also use the new bike infrastructure are also reducing congestion and its effects. The use of an electric scooter can either increase or lessen your carbon footprint. If the electric scooter ride were to be replacing a trip that one would normally be making with a car then the footprint decreases however if the trip was in place of one that would be made walking, then there is a higher environmental cost.Overall electric scooters are expected to benefit the environment as many of their rides are less than 2 miles and last year the share of vehicle trips that was less than 6 miles was 60% according to the US Department of Energy. The public of Austin has a 76% positive view of the use of electric scooters (Irfan, 2018)
The use and efficiency of these alternative modes of transportation can only grow to a certain extent since the main factor is that a cities’ streets must be designed to accommodate these modes. In areas where there are no designated bike lanes or sidewalks the use of bikes or electric scooters only causes more congestion on the main roads. With the advancements in technology and urge to reduce pollution micro-mobility has been seen as a formidable solution by cities to revolutionize transportation and relieve the congestion created by full sized cars. Micro-mobility such as electric scooters, bicycles, gyropods, and small electric cars are different means of transportation that are non-polluting by nature and can be accessible to the general public (BNP Paribas, 2018). The small size and demands of micro-mobility allows for giant leap forwards in designing smart cities by making transportation compatible with data so that cities can better adapt their infrastructure easier and productively. Some cities are accommodating to the trend of micro mobility by piloting “fossil-fuel-free streets” as shown in Figures 6,7,8. This is to undo the poor urban planning that is currently established which prioritizes car transportation over everything. 12 mega-cities (London, Paris, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan, Seattle, Auckland, and Cape Town) signed the Fossil-Fuel Streets Declaration which envisions only zero emission buses from 2025, and ensuring a major area of the city is zero emission by 2030 (, 2017). They are to transform by implementing people friendly planning policies , increasing the rates of walking, cycling, and use of shared transport. Conversion to people oriented streets leads to reduced congestion which in turn reduces pollution emission from vehicles including amount of exposure intensity. Traffic is already the biggest source of air pollution and globally responsible for one quarter of particulate matter in the air (EU Science HUB, 2016).
As stated by a UT student, “There’s no winning with cars in Austin, its best if you stay away from them!” .
Works Cited
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Baldauf, R., et al. “Near-Road Air Quality Monitoring: Factors Affecting Network Design and Interpretation of Data.” SpringerLink, Humana Press, 12 Mar. 2009, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11869–009–0028–0.
Bigazzi, Alexander Y, et al. “Traffic Congestion and Air Pollution Exposure for Motorists: Comparing Exposure Duration and Intensity.” Site, 2015, pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cengin_fac/330/.
Bontke, Jordan. “Austin Bike Crashes on the Decline.” KEYE, 2017, cbsaustin.com/news/local/austin-bike-crashes-on-the-decline.
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Irfan, Umair. “Electric Scooters’ Sudden Invasion of American Cities, Explained.” Vox, Vox, 7 Sept. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17676670/electric-scooter-rental-bird-lime-skip-spin-cities.
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“Urban Air Pollution — What Are the Main Sources across the World? — EU Science Hub — European Commission.” Together Against Trafficking in Human Beings, 7 Oct. 2016, ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/what-are-main-sources-urban-air-pollution.
Watts, Mark. “C40: Streets Can Kill Cities: C40’s Mark Watts on the Fossil Fuel-Free Streets Declaration.” C40 Cities: Why Cities? Ending Climate Change Begins in the City, 2017, www.c40.org/blog_posts/streets-can-kill-cities-by-mark-watts.
“Will Micro-Mobility Redesign the Smart City?” BNP Paribas Fortis, 2018, companies.bnpparibasfortis.be/en/article?n=will-micro-mobility-redesign-the-smart-city.
Xue, et al. “A Study on the Model of Traffic Flow and Vehicle Exhaust Emission.” Advances in Decision Sciences, Hindawi, 19 Dec. 2013, www.hindawi.com/journals/mpe/2013/736285/.
Zhang, Kai. Vehicle Emissions in Congestion: Comparison of Work Zone, Rush Hour and Free-Flow Conditions. Jan. 2011, sph.uth.edu/kaizhang/files/2014/02/Zhang-2011-AE.pdf.
Originally published at medium.com on October 4, 2018.
