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The Washington Post's front page this morning features a story on increased use of public transportation and van pooling in D.C.'s outer suburbs due to rising gas prices. In some communities, bus ridership is up by more than 20 percent. But nowhere does the article tackle the continued exurbanization of the D.C. metro area, which will ultimately undermine attempts to grow mass transit. Thank goodness for Ryan Avent, the wonkosphere's most interesting urban planning writer, who has the stats on housing permits requested by various cities this year:
Dallas has authorized twice as many single family units as San Francisco has total housing units, and Houston has authorized nearly four times as many single family units as San Francisco has total units. In fact, the only metro areas with more total units than Houston has single family units are Dallas and New York.Now, Dallas and Houston deserve credit for beginning to address the auto-centricity of their transportation networks. But transportation and land-use are intimately connected, and the construction of thousands of new single family homes at densities that are unlikely to make transit use all that attractive is likely to result in a surge of energy use and carbon emissions that overwhelms savings from new transit ridership.The point is that it’s not enough to simply expand transit. We also need to expand the number of homes in places that are compatible with transit, and reduce the proportion of homes in places that aren’t. And we need to adopt national legislation that will ensure that the costs of carbon emissions are incorporated into land-use decisions across the nation, and not just in forward thinking metro areas.Yes.--Dana Goldstein
