No Light Rail in Vancouver!
Judging Planners by Their Intentions
A group called Sustainlane has ranked America’s largest cities for their sustainability. Which is number one? Why, Portland, of course.
But I have a few questions about how they calculated their rankings. Most of their data are based on secondary sources. Take public transit, for example, which, they say, is based on the “2003 Texas Mobility Study.” Based on whatever this study is supposed to say, Portland gets a greenish score of 20 while Honolulu gets a yellow 28 (apparently, smaller numbers are better).
In fact, Honolulu has one of the highest rates of transit ridership of any urban area in the country. U.S. DOT data show that 3.9 percent of all mechanized travel in Honolulu is by transit, compared with just 2.2 percent in Portland. The 2000 census found that 9.3 percent of Honolulu workers took transit to work, while only 7.7 percent of Portland workers did.
So how did Sustainlane come up with their numbers? The group says they docked Honolulu because it hasn’t built a rail line. Intentions are more important than results.
Sustainlane also focused on cities rather than urban areas — and transit in the city of Portland does have slightly higher share of ridership than Honolulu. But this only shows what is wrong with focusing on cities rather than urban areas. Honolulu has a merged city/county government, so the entire island of Oahu is Honolulu. Yet most of the island is rural, so the city’s transit market share is lower than other cities, like Portland, that are entirely urban and surrounded by suburbs (where transit ridership is typically lower).
How about some of the other criteria used in Sustainlane’s analysis? “In 1993, Portland was the first city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Well, in fact, it was the first city to claim to reduce them, and the year was 2004, not 1993. And then, it turned out to be an error in arithmetic, and it did not reduce emissions at all. But I guess claiming to reduce emissions is good enough.
Portland also gets credit for being “at the forefront of local food movements.” It got to that forefront because the mayor “formed a food advisory council” and “urged citizens to buy at least 10% of their food from local sources.” It doesn’t mean they are actually eating anything any different from anyone else.
Plus, Portland has an Office of Sustainable Development and it plans to develop renewable energy sources by 2010. Plans plans plans. It would be nice to rank cities on actual performance rather than their plans.
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Reprinted from The Antiplanner