Streamlining public transportation has long been a favored approach to combat climate change, and rightfully so. The advent of the automobile completely changed our relationship with space, redesigning the layout of our cities to specifically accommodate cars.
But, over time, we learned that car transport is antithetical to efficient urban life. That’s where the problem lies: Sustainable cities depend on effective public transportation.
So why can’t we build it?
Experiencing the public transportation system in Japan for the first time was unforgettable. As a Bay Area native, my 18-mile weekend trips to San Francisco via Caltrain and Muni could sometimes take upwards of two hours. You can imagine the sense of awe I felt when I took the Shinkansen bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto — a distance of 280 miles — in almost the same two hours.
This stark contrast brought to mind California’s own aspirations for high-speed rail. In 2008, voters sanctioned a nearly $10 billion bond to construct a rail line that could connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours.
We now know that the approach to the project was a bust. High-speed rail had an unrealistic timeline, with the system expected to be fully operational by 2020 and an estimated cost of $33 billion. Fast-forward four years, and the entire route is still far from completion, with its projected cost ballooning to nearly $100 billion more than the initial budget.
Our failure to build important infrastructure is at the heart of our over reliance on cars. It was once estimated that 50% of the land in American cities is devoted to vehicular infrastructure, and nearly one-quarter is dedicated to parking lots.
In San Bernardino, for example, they account for 49% of the city’s core.
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If we de-emphasized cars as a pillar of our urban planning, we could reclaim half of our cities. The solution is right under our noses.
We have the technology. We have the resources. We have the knowledge. So why haven’t we accomplished anything? It’s easy to say that Californians running for office this year should rally behind better public transit and other infrastructural improvements to limit urban sprawl. But the reality is that there is a preliminary challenge that we need to tackle. The high-speed rail project illustrates the greater issue at large: No matter how innovative or ambitious the solution is, California just can’t seem to get these infrastructure plans off the ground.
First and foremost, legislators need to support streamlining the process of infrastructure construction — and it starts with realistic project goals and transparent planning.
Our history suggests that we chronically underestimate the cost of projects, encountering scope creep that escalates both prices and stakes. Each time a new interest-holder raises a concern in the midst of a project, it becomes more expensive and more problematic. California needs planning processes that involve stakeholders from the outset — something more future-proof and inclusive.
California has already made strides in this direction, as seen in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s infrastructure streamlining package. In Newsom’s words, it’s about tackling California’s “pervasive mindset of ‘no.’” Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton observed that a big reason for this mindset is that Californians have become increasingly environmentally conscious. Yes, environmental concerns are often used as justification to oppose projects, but this awareness is a strength. More awareness means we can now make more informed and sustainable decisions, creating infrastructure that contributes positively to our surroundings rather than detracts.
Unimplemented ideas have little value. People are losing trust in the state’s ability to build things, and climate change isn’t going to wait.
Sophia Bella is a junior at Burlingame High School. She is an avid writer and serves as the managing editor for her school’s student publication. She wrote this for CalMatters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics. More than 70 high school students across California submitted opinion pieces to CalMatters’ second annual Earth Day contest. The 2024 contest theme was “What solution should Californians running for office support to help address climate change?”
(13) comments
Thanks for your letter, Ms. Bella. Idealistic but not at all practical when one tries to work out the details. For instance, we’ll still have a problem with the initial and final miles. Even if one is relatively healthy and mobile, it’s difficult to manage 5 bags of groceries in a trip (similar issue with bicycles). It’s difficult to imagine many parents, even advocates of free-range parenting, to allow their kids to walk to and from public transportation to attend school and pre- or after-school activities. And then we have the granddaddy of them all - who will pay for this infrastructure? We can’t keep the roads in our state in decent shape and we can’t build a train-to-nowhere without busting the bank. And let’s not get into this man-made climate change thing… if folks take over 400 private jets to a climate conference, spewing more carbon than many of us will ever generate in our lifetimes, it’s obvious climate change isn’t a real thing…
Funny story, I often go shopping at the local neighborhood store on Saturday or Sunday morning. All I see are overweight guys in huge pickup trucks picking up an average of three items. A six pack, some chips and maybe 1 or 2 things the wife asked them to bring as well.
These guys look like a little sport would do them some good before they start watching sports.
The 5-bag people might go to Costco, but we don't see them at the local liquor store or pizza place.
Park in front of any take-out restaurants and its never old people that claim they could never walk or ride, its young people that could easily take a bike ride to McDonalds or walk to Starbucks - it would do them some good.
easygerd - you are fabulous at your likely controversial observations. Did you notice that the youngsters who are in front of Columbia University getting DoorDash to deliver their meals? Yes, really committed activists supporting murderous Hamas. They would not last 24 hours in Gaza. Notice that they have to lift their masks to expose their parents' paid for perfect teeth in order to eat?
So now we all agree with Mark Simon, that the Anti-Semite Henry Ford should lose his glorification. I absolutely support that.
And he should lose it for two reasons:
A) Being an antisemite, an outspoken eugenicist and having a bromance with Adolph
B) Flooding the market with a cheap product that makes people addicted, overweight, and unhealthy.
... and apparently too lazy to go to restaurants by themselves.
Um, easygerd, you expect folks riding bikes to buy a six pack and then tote them home? Nobody likes warm beer and I’m sure some people would frown upon drinking and riding… Meanwhile if you don’t like the 5 bags of groceries thing, I’ll add folks that need to buy home furnishings, office equipment, anything else that isn’t convenient to carry and ride. And how many times do delivery drivers drop off a small package or two at various doorsteps? Or, as Mr. van Ulden noted, food delivery drivers? Or do Amazon and other delivery services get a pass? Let’s get real – you may get more folks to ride bicycles but I’d say only for recreation, where practicality doesn’t need to be accounted for. BTW, are these huge pickup trucks manufactured by Ford?
How many times a year do people need new furniture and how many times to they run an errand within 2 miles of home?
90% of households in America own a car, 60% own bicycles, so we can assume a majority of American families and people own both.
What is the problem if some people choose one vehicle for some occasions and another one for the other occasions?
People with cars are usually grateful for all the people not in cars. Two of the least congested cities in the world are Copenhagen and Stockholm, whereas car-centric US cities are a complete congestion mess and especially for emergency services and business trucks. And parking is also a breeze in Copenhagen or Stockholm as all these bicycles need way less space and car garages have plenty of space.
I don't need more bicycle facilities for myself, I want it so others can use them and I have downtown car parking when I need it. A few bike lanes here and there solves many problems for many people - and especially drivers.
We are addicted to the car, in the same way we were addicted to tobacco. We need social engineers, not highway engineers, to solve this. Start with getting car ads off TV.
Willallen - I trust you live within walking distance of a train station or a bus stop? Well, most of us don't and for a reason. To equate tobacco with using a car is beyond preposterous. California's governments are chockful of social engineers and look where they have gotten us? Homelessness, unconscionable energy prices, potholed freeways, and now Express Lanes that we have to pay for twice. I have worked in environments where social engineers, a misnomer if there ever was one, were on the agenda. Most of their ideas were laughed off the table but some hairbrained proposals stuck, much to our detriment. You would fit right in.
Willallen, we also need city planners who are not highway engineers--who do not design city streets as if they were highways. It's well documented that the principles for designing safe city streets--safe and pleasant to walk, bike, or drive--are different than designing highways. Yet cities continue to make city streets like highways.
Westy - you may be surprised but I agree with you. Even on my street, cars come by well in excess of 25 miles per hour. I believe reducing the speed limit on residential streets to 15 mph would be first step and evaluating why Ralston Ave, for example, needs to allow for 40 MPH. I use that sidewalk from time to time and it is terrifying. Aggressive speed limit enforcement is overdue and it would help with city and county finances. It is not the car, but the driver! Thank you for bringing this up.
"There are two very important statements here.
A) Cars are the New Tobacco - that one is correct.
That statement even made it into the National Library of Medicine: "Private cars cause significant health harm. The impacts include physical inactivity, obesity, death and injury from crashes, cardio-respiratory disease from air pollution, noise, community severance and climate change. The car lobby resists measures that would restrict car use, using tactics similar to the tobacco industry."
B) It's the Driver, not the car - that one is incorrect
If the same driver runs at a bus stop, he will hurt himself. If he rides his bicycles at a bus stop, he will hurt himself. If she drives a 4-ton SUV into a bus stop, she kills a family in San Francisco. Cars and drivers kill 40,000 people. A Boing 737 loses a door, all hell brakes lose. Imagine 200 of those airplanes going down every year.
Speed gives people a high, so does shopping and the new car smell. All that led to the fact that cars and driving brought addiction. Modern cars have all the tools to restrict drivers, they could be geofenced, speed limited, they could check for drunk and distracted drivers. Instead the cars are shielding the drivers from the noise and environment so they notice the speed. City planners or highway engineers are doing the same.
It's city planners and the cars - the drivers can't help themselves, they are addicted.
The article however leaves out the most important tool. Neither public transportation nor the car makes school children healthier and smarter - that can only be achieved by the bicycle. Luckily all that is needed are simple bike lanes - the cheapest of all 'road infrastructure'. With bike lanes people that want to ween themselves off the addiction of a car have a better and healthier way of transportation.
Sophia, the first step should be to ask your Burlingame classmates to leave their Mercedes in their garages, to ask Burlingame High School to prohibit students from driving to school, and then to prohibit the local principal and the local teachers from driving cars as well. Let me know how that goes.
"We now know that the approach to the project was a bust. High-speed rail had an unrealistic timeline.."
Yea - THAT'S the reason the project failed. That's irresponsible reporting at best and rhetorical lying/guiding at worst - I think its somewhere in the middle with you. You are too young to understand how corruption works. You can irresponsibility call it "scope creep" - but that's just the phrase used to justify or explain away corruption by the elites to the underlings. You are probably too young to have listened to the late great George Carlin - here is a quote I think you should hear." They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly s***y jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this ****** place! It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club."
And if you want to talk about the Big Club and corruption - look no further than the entire Climate Change Cult - the biggest purveyor of economic BS on planet earth. They will take private jets to conferences - but you cant drive a car or have a gas stove and you will eat bugs. Like Klaus Ear-Shwab said - you will own nothing and be happy. Children that are wrapped up in this Cult really start to lose their humanity at a young age. Instead of growing and learning about who you really are in this world - newsflash you won't completely figure that out until you are in your 30s - you are wrapped up in some phony existential crisis trying to solve the right problems in the totally wrong way. I always respect the passion and care you folks have for the planet and the greater good - but its easy to slip into Bolshevik rhetoric if you don't respect the individual rights God gave us all in the Bill of Rights as human beings. There are certain things that are unalienable - meaning the state can go take a hike - no person has the right or should think they have the right to tell another person they cannot drive a car to live their life - or own a gun - or purchase and use any tool they deem fit to seek life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you looked at a high school test from the Civil War times and compared it to the common core stuff you kids are faced with now - you would fail. Try it for yourself. You children are just not as smart or altruistic as you think you are. You could literally take up ANY other passion pursuit and I would support it - but this climate change garbage is a soul killer for you kids. You folks cannot control the behavior of your own peers - yet you want to tell adults what to do - and you want to make our lives more difficult because you are scared of the future. You do not get to control other people because you are scared or feel morally superior. I love it when people try to compare Japan to the USA. Japan is a totally Nationalistic country with a complete emphasis on being "Japanese" - was just there myself - they dont have that whole forced multiculturalist ideology and are not tolerant of criminal behavior or illegal immigrants or even homeless people. Bottom line is everyone in Japan is subscribed to a universal standard of respect - who "you are" really doesnt matter over there - rightfully so because your emotions or delusions shouldn't matter to anybody else. There is a reason things just work better in Japan and California has become a 3rd world country and insane asylum - providing now free health care and drugs to illegal immigrants. Don't you think that money would be better spent on public transit? But people like you will not step up and say the uncomfortable truths for fear of being cancelled- the trajectory of this state not logical - its why you liberals always end up eating each other. Its hilarious to watch tbh. I will not support Bolshevik Youth and their Hegelian Dialectics that they are too ignorant to know they are pushing. You can keep your 15 minute cities and "sustainability" - it becomes very dangerous when people think they have the right to control others basic needs/rights that have been standard for the last 100 years. What have you experienced other than a little trip to Japan that validates you? You are a junior in High School - have all the safety and security of mommy and daddy - and you want to tell me to ride a bike over the bridge every morning to get to my office? Give me a break. When I was your age I volunteered at the local San Mateo Convalescent Hospital for stroke victims - i volunteered at Coyote Point to help build new things for the parks department. I saw the true value in my energy to do something directly tangible for individual people - to bring palpable positivity that exists outside of my politics and my "identity" - to put in a hard days work for something kids might enjoy in my local community and help families build. You think to write an article to a NonProfit. We are not the same. Not only that - the topic was not open ended at all. When I was at the Burlingame High Debate team - we were not forced to accept a false premise before even forming an argument. If you didn't accept "climate change" as a universal truth you would not be able to participate. This is why your generation is done. You cannot see the forest for the trees. You cant even see the problem to ask the right questions. I went to Burlingame too once upon a time - was the captain of the soccer and tennis team and went to UCSB. My legacy endures to this day - let's see what your will be. An old Native American Proverb that has helped me in life - no matter how long you walk in the wrong direction - you can always turn around. I feel like you are not yet a lost cause. Be well.
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