Abstract
The United States paves more area every two years than the Roman Empire did in its entire existence.1 Since 1980, an average of 25,500 miles has been added yearly. The US Department of Transportation counts a total of 8,766,049 “lane miles” of public highway, as of 2014.2 Assuming an average 12-foot lane width, plus 4 feet for shoulder and other auxiliary areas, one lane-mile equals 84,480 square feet, or nearly two acres. The total—17 million acres—is enough paved area to cover New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. Add to this an estimated 4.7 million acres (1,921,582 hectares) devoted to parking in the United States.3 The US road network is “perhaps the biggest object ever built.”4 By one estimate, the US Interstate Highway System alone excavated enough soil to cover Connecticut knee-deep, and used concrete enough for 80 Hoover Dams, steel for 170 Empire State Buildings, and drain pipe to match water and sewer for Chicago six times over.5 It is easy to see that paving is an environmental issue of colossal proportions.6
Little by little, roads eat away at the hearts of mountains.
—Gary Lawless, First Sight of Land, 1990
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Notes
- 1.
Total paved Roman roads, about 50,000 miles, www.britannica.com/technology/Roman-road-system. Using stone slabs on cement underlayment, laid by hand, this is an astonishing achievement. (The Roman road system included another 200,000 miles of unpaved roads.) US figures, see following note. The “twice as much” is conservative, since Roman paved roads were usually twenty-four feet wide (two lanes, by current standards), though in remote provinces skimping on this standard was probably common. To be completely fair to the Romans, every mile of road should perhaps be tallied as two “lane miles.” Even using this calculation, four years’ worth of US paving would equal more than six centuries of Roman road construction. For diagrams of how Roman roads were constructed, and other data, see www.crystalinks.com/romeroads.html. Dates of Roman road building are from www.history.com/news/history-lists/8-ways-roads-helped-rome-rule-the-ancient-world, which estimates 55,000 miles rather than 50,000, built from 312 BC into the fourth century AD.
- 2.
From www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_06.html; statistics are from 1980, 1985, then annually from 1990 through 2014. The 25,500-mile average includes two years when lane-miles were reduced (1998 and 2011) for reasons unknown. If those two negative years are excluded, the average is over 30,000 lane-miles per year. The Federal Highway Administration estimated in 2012 that there were 1.4 million miles of unpaved roads in the United States, about seven times as many miles as unpaved Roman roads. (From http://mtri.org/unpaved/, a project using drones and other recent technology to assess remote roads.)
- 3.
From www.earth-policy.org/Alerts/Alert12_data2.htm. If the standard space is 10 × 18 feet, this rep-resents about 1.15 billion spaces. The International Parking Institute’s website, www.parking.org/, listed 105.2 million in 1999, clearly a different method of estimating.
- 4.
Russell Ash, Incredible Comparisons (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1996), 26.
- 5.
From the May 2016 catalog of HD Supply Construction & Industrial, Norcross GA; www.hdsupplysolutions.com; their source is not cited.
- 6.
Bruce Ferguson (University of Georgia) estimates US paving, based on volumes of asphalt and concrete sold, at a quarter-million to half-million acres each year. This is a growth rate of 1.5 to 3 percent of our esti-mated total area—higher than the population growth rate!
- 7.
Ben Kelley, The Pavers and the Paved (New York: Donald Brown, 1971).
- 8.
Jonathan F. P. Rose, The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life (New York: Harper Wave, 2016). Rose’s bibliography is a great place to start for current integrative thinking about urban design.
- 9.
Nadav Malin, “Walkable Neighborhoods Replace Suburbs as Preferred Real Estate,” EBN, Oct 2012, 3.
- 10.
Mark Childs, Parking Spaces (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999), 195.
- 11.
Candace Pearson, “Diesel Exhaust Throws Honeybees Off the Scent,” EBN, Nov 2013, 18; American Cancer Society, “Diesel Exhaust and Cancer,” www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/diesel-exhaust-and-cancer.html.
- 12.
Ibid., 197.
- 13.
Erin Weaver, “Rural Areas Feel Heat from Cities,” EBN, Mar 2013, 5.
- 14.
Tom Schueler, Site Planning for Urban Stream Protection (Ellicott City MD: Center for Watershed Protection, 1995), 148.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
This was known as SAFE-TEA, a broad transportation act that includes clarification of accountability for “flexible” but well-reasoned designs. It was signed by President George W. Bush in 2005. The Context-Sensitive Design resource information website, www.contextsensitivesolutions.org/, confirms that “most legal experts agree that context-sensitive solutions will not cause the engineer [liability] problems as long as they are well reasoned and comprehensively documented.” For the authoritative source on this subject, see Richard O. Jones (Federal Highway Administration Regional Counsel, Region 8), Transportation Research Board 2004 Distinguished Lectureship, “Context Sensitive Design: Will the Vision Overcome Liability Concerns?” available from the above website.
- 17.
Erik Sherman, “Tales of Commuter Terror,” Computerworld, 30 Oct 2000. Statistics from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute study of 1999, www.tti.tamu.edu/. (“We were waiting for the 2000 study, but the researchers got stuck in traffic,” notes the writer wryly.)
- 18.
The transit part of these cities was deliberately killed by auto interests, as fictionally depicted in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- 19.
Cited in David Gram, “Paving Costs Skyrocket with Rising Oil Prices,” Associated Press syndicated report, 16 Jun 2005. The article notes that the financial costs are due almost entirely to the high energy costs of paving. A version of this article, dated 3 Jul of the same year and citing a twenty-city average increase of 13 percent in 2004 alone, is online at www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2005/07/03/rising-oil-prices-force-states-to-put-paving-projects-on-hold/bf36f44d-11eb-4013-82b8-2217085a53b7/?utm_term=.fdf0178e320f.
- 20.
Foundation for Pavement Preservation, “Pavement Preventive Maintenance Guidelines,” update of 27 Mar 2001, 5, www.mdt.mt.gov/publications/docs/brochures/research/toolbox/FHWA/PavPrevMainGuides.pdf.
- 21.
These policy suggestions are based on University of Georgia School of Environmental Design, Land Development Provisions to Protect Georgia Water Quality, ed. David Nichols (Athens: Georgia Department of Natural Resources, 1997).
- 22.
Impervious Surface Reduction Study (Olympia WA: City of Olympia Public Works Department, 1995), final report, 84–85.
- 23.
Center for Watershed Protection, Model Development Principles to Protect Our Streams, Lakes, and Wetlands (Ellicott City MD: Center for Watershed Protection, 1998), 76.
- 24.
Richard S. Wilson, “Suburban Parking Requirements and the Shaping of Suburbia,” Journal of the American Planning Association 61, no. 1 (1995): 29–42.
- 25.
Center for Watershed Protection, Model Development Principles, 73.
- 26.
Ibid., 75.
- 27.
Richard Unterman, “Office Park Paradise,” LAM, Aug 1998.
- 28.
Like any other useful policy, it can be used as a smoke screen, where speedway standards are still the out-come and “public input” simply means “You had your say; now shut up.”
- 29.
K. Sorvig, “Paving of County Road 42 Without Storm-water Measures Gouges 8 Foot Deep by 100 Yard Gullies in Private Property.” Unpublished white paper; to be posted with other supplemental materials for this book.
- 30.
EPA regulations (NPDES Phase Two) require permanent soil stabilization for all projects larger than one acre; state and federal road projects in the same county routinely comply.
- 31.
Technically, the “Green Bible” is titled A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, 5th ed. (Washington DC: AASHTO, 2004). The problem of engineers insisting on inflexible interpretations of this book is so great that AASHTO also publishes “A Guide for Achieving Flexibility in High-way Design,” a precursor to CSD. From https://bookstore.transportation.org/, or www.contextsensitivesolutions.org/, also the source for R. O. Jones, “Context Sensitive Design” (above). Jones explains the engineering community’s overblown fear of liability: attempts to avoid lawsuits through rigid “standards” were a response to the historical loss of “sovereign immunity” for state officials in the 1950s. Limitations on design liability were not made law until the 1980s. Any engineer schooled in the intervening unprotected decades is likely to verge on paranoia about liability.
- 32.
This and the following quote from R. A. White were found on his office’s website (www.tlcnetwork.org/bobwhite.html), which has since been removed.
- 33.
Emily Catacchio, “More Cyclists + Better Design = Safer Roadways,” EBN, Feb 2011, 3.
- 34.
Erin Weaver, “Pedestrians and Cyclists Are Good for Business,” EBN, Jan 2013, 5. These results argue against complaints by businesses when pedestrianization of a street is proposed. Interestingly, supermarkets did not share the increased spending trend, probably because people tend to make single visits to stock up, which are awkward on a bike.
- 35.
Drivers.com staff, “Traffic Calming and the Battle for the Roadway,” 24 Dec 2009, www.drivers.com/article/122/. While many motorists’ associations treat traffic calming as a govern-mental conspiracy against their “rights,” Drivers.com takes a very balanced view of the is-sues. Note that the full URL for the motorists’ resource is www.drivers.com/driving.php; entering only www.drivers.com takes you to a site that offers software driver updates!
- 36.
On traffic calming and scenic roads, see Christiana M. Briganti and Lester A. Hoel, “Design and Information Requirements for Travel and Tourism Needs on Scenic Byways—Final Report,” VTRC95-R1 (Charlottesville: Virginia Transportation Research Council, Dec 1994), https://ntl.bts.gov/lib/36000/36900/36912/95-R1.pdf.
- 37.
These acts, renewed periodically, have names like IS-TEA and TEA-21.
- 38.
Robert B. Noland, “Traffic Fatalities and Injuries: The Effect of Changes in Infrastructure and Other Trends,” Accident Analysis and Prevention 35, no. 4 (2003): 599–611. PDF online at www.sonic.net/~woodhull/trans/Noland_Hwy_Stds2.pdf. Originally presented at the 2001 annual meeting of the US Department of Transportation’s Transportation Research Board.
- 39.
Italics added. The study differentiates between controlled-access freeways, where some widening and straightening can improve safety, and other road types. On non-freeway roads, lanes wider than eleven feet encourage speeding and inattentiveness and result in more accidents and a higher percentage of accidents resulting in serious injury or death.
- 40.
Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology, “Roadway Widths for Low-Traffic Vol-ume Roads,” FHWA-RD-94-023, Jul 1994, www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfac/94023.cfm.
- 41.
Alex Wilson, “Traffic Calming Ahead!” EBN, Mar 2003.
- 42.
Daniel B. Wood, “American Cities Clearing Streets to Lure Residents Out of Their Cars,” Christian Science Monitor, 25 May 2007.
- 43.
This paranoiac view appears in T. Peter Ruane, “Zealots Would Stop Road Work,” Engineering News-Record, 14 Jun 1999, 11. Ruane, president of ARTB, even considered urban sprawl to be “in the public interest,” for obvious self-serving reasons.
- 44.
Center for Watershed Protection, Model Development Principles, 33.
- 45.
Crystal Atkins and Michael Coleman, “Influence of Traffic Calming on Emergency Response Times,” ITE Journal (Aug 1997): 42–47.
- 46.
A. Ann Sorensen and J. Dixon Esseks, “Living on the Edge: The Costs and Risks of Scatter Devel-opment,” American Farmland Trust Newsletter, Mar 1998.
- 47.
Wilson, “Traffic Calming Ahead!” Roundabouts only work where drivers are familiar with the rules, and many Americans are not.
- 48.
See the Drivers.com website, note 35 above.
- 49.
An official AASHTO “NCHRP Project 15-33 Status Report” was created, apparently in 2016 (https://design.transportation.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2017/05/Overview-of-Creating-Complete-Corridors.pdf). This indicates that revisions to the 1991 guide began in 2000, and went through four or five major attempts before being submitted for “balloting” under the title Creating Complete Roadway Corridors: The AASHTO Guide to Transportation Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design. No part of that title appears in any subsequent AASHTO publications catalog that I can locate. The fact that new editions of guidelines on “inspection of safety hardware” and the like do appear would seem to indicate a reversion to conventional engineering attitudes among whomever the “balloting” parties were. In any case, these standards have been under development for exactly the amount of time that it has taken this book to go through three editions; authorship by engineering committee is clearly fraught. The unfortunate absence of a new standard makes the “NCHRP Project 15-33 Status Report” (a PowerPoint presentation) worth reviewing.
- 50.
All references in this paragraph are from EBN reports: Jessica Boehland, “Dense Develop-ment Saves Energy,” Sep 2005, 6; Allyson Wendt, “Report Finds Shorter Commutes in Portland,” Nov 2007, 6; Candace Pearson, “The Poor Stay Poor in Sprawling Cit-ies,” Sep 2013, 19, referencing www.equality-of-opportunity.org/documents/; Alex Wilson and Rachel Navaro, “Driving to Green Buildings: The Transportation Energy Intensity of Buildings,” Sep 2007, 1; and Paula Melton, “Study Says Urban Heat Islands Worsen Smog,” Jul 2011, 5.
- 51.
General information on road ecology is primarily from the website of the UC Davis Road Ecology Center, http://roadecology.ucdavis.edu/.
- 52.
See James T. Carlton and Gregory M. Ruiz, “Vector Science and Integrated Vector Management in Bioinvasion Ecology,” in Invasive Alien Species: A New Synthesis, ed. H. A. Mooney et al. (Washington DC: Island Press, 2005). It is well established that road construction, with soil disturbance and heavy equipment movements, is a major vector for invasive plant seeds.
- 53.
Beginning with the 1997 transportation policy TEA-21, wildlife protection has been eligible for federal “intermodal” and context-sensitive funding.
- 54.
From the executive summary of STPP’s report by Patricia A. White and Michelle Ernst, “Second Nature: Improving Transportation Without Putting Nature Second,” 22 Apr 2003, http://transact.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Second_Nature.pdf.
- 55.
- 56.
The same concept, using attacking forces to protect oneself, distinguishes “soft” martial arts, like aikido and tai chi, from “hard” ones, like karate and tae kwon do.
- 57.
Impervious Surface Reduction Study, executive summary, 20.
- 58.
Gary Cramer, “Naturally Secluded,” LAM, Jan 2006.
- 59.
BASMAA, Start at the Source (San Francisco: Bay Area Storm-water Management Agencies Association, 1997), 15; Bruce Ferguson was one of the consultants for this book.
- 60.
The use of porous asphalt over a reservoir was first researched in the 1970s by Edmund Thelan and Fielding Howe of Philadelphia (the latter a practicing landscape architect). Firms such as Cahill and Associates, Resource Technologies, and Andropogon Associates were pioneers in its use.
- 61.
Bruce Ferguson, Porous Pavements (Boca Raton FL: CRC Press, 2005), 499–500, cites five studies demonstrating 3-dB reduction.
- 62.
John E. Paine, Pervious Pavement Manual (Orlando: Florida Concrete and Products Association, n.d.).
- 63.
Porosity figures are from B. Ferguson, personal communication.
- 64.
Grasspave2 brochure from Invisible Structures.
- 65.
Impervious Surface Reduction Study, 79–80.
- 66.
James Sipes and Mack Roberts, “Grass Paving Systems,” LAM, Jun 1994, 33.
- 67.
“Henderson Field Demonstration Project Summary” (Olympia WA: City of Olympia, 1996), 13.
- 68.
Sipes and Roberts, “Grass Paving Systems,” 33.
- 69.
“Henderson Field,” 7–13.
- 70.
Matthew Evans, Nina Bassuk, and Peter Trowbridge, “Sidewalk Design for Tree Survival,” LAM, Mar 1990, 103.
- 71.
Adam Arvidson, “A Green Demonstration,” LAM, Sep 2006, 50.
- 72.
Meg Calkins, “Cooling the Blacktop,” LAM, Feb 2007, 54–61.
- 73.
Hashem Akbari, US EPA, Climate Change Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and US Department of Energy, Cooling Our Communities: A Guidebook on Tree Planting and Light-Colored Surfacing (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1992), US Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory report LBL-31587.
- 74.
Childs, Parking Spaces, 196.
- 75.
Information on these coatings comes from interviews with Deco Asphalt in California and Integrated Paving Concepts in Canada. Information on integral asphalt color is from interviews with Asphacolor (Madera CA). See resources for more information.
- 76.
One study, funded by the asphalt industry and involving a very small sample of very small test sites, argued that surface-reflective paving did little to affect air temperatures, very likely an attack on the competition, concrete. See Candace Pearson, “More Questions Than Answers in Report on Reflective Pave-ments,” EBN, Mar 2014, 19.
- 77.
Jenny Anderson, “Willing to Lease Your Bridge,” New York Times, 27 Aug 2008, C1.
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© 2018 Kim Sorvig and J. William Thompson
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Sorvig, K., Thompson, J.W. (2018). Pave Less. In: Sustainable Landscape Construction. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-811-4_6
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