Early on when I started my blog back in 2006, around the same time as this newsletter, I thought I knew everything and wanted to share it. Now I know nothing, or at least it feels that way. Of course that’s not really true but that’s sometimes how it feels when there’s just so much information out there and I just don’t feel like I have enough of it to make an argument one way or another. Though it’s probably a good thing that keeps us measured and less likely to jump to conclusions, it can also limit us from being experimental or think outside of the box.
So here’s an experiment I want to run. When I find articles for the newsletter every day, I want to connect them all. In many instances they aren’t connected but I want to find one way in which they are so that cities make better sense to me.
So let’s take two potentially different topics, Paris losing population and Austin shelving electric buses for a year because of Proterra’s bankruptcy. On their face, they are two completely different topics under a general umbrella of cities.
But taking a closer look, what can we see?
Paris’ urban core is losing population to the tune of 10,000 people a year. Even with massive amounts of progress on sustainable transportation and climate action, their housing stock is limiting who can stay and live there.
Families and middle income residents can’t partake in the increased quality of life even as more homes are being built. Officials say more units become second homes and short term rental operations for those that purchase them. And existing apartments are being combined to make bigger ones, reducing housing numbers even more.
In Austin, the transit agency is mothballing around half of it’s electric vehicle fleet built by Proterra, an electric bus company that went bankrupt but whose business was purchased at auction. The reason being that there aren’t enough end of the line chargers to keep up service levels through the day. The other half of Capital Metro’s electric fleet built by New Flyer in Canada will continue operating.
The move in Austin represents some national frustration at the roll out of bus electrification programs. In an attempt to create movement on the laudable goal of emissions reductions through fleet electrification, the industry as a whole suffers a black eye and perhaps a setback from a perception of failure. As cities like Shenzhen have shown, fleet electrification is doable, but lessons need to be learned along the way.
Then what ties Paris and Austin together in this particular instance? Deferred resource allocation. Austin bought buses it can’t use at the moment and Paris residents are locked out of housing by absentee homeowners and 26,000 short term rentals. Paris is building more housing and Austin has purchased more buses, but they just aren’t getting used in ways that are beneficial to the population.
How does this get remedied? I’m not sure. You could argue as Anne Hidalgo’s administration has that more regulations on second homes and short term rentals are in order. Barcelona is going to have a go at that too.
In Austin’s case, there’s something off with the fact that federal and state governments have mandated zero emissions fleets for an industry that is somewhat bespoke and doesn’t have billions in sales and competition like the auto industry. Other cities have gone electric and seem to be figuring it out, but what’s really needed is greater service to reduce emissions through ridership gains. We do need to test these bus systems out and go through the growing pains of learning what it takes to make it work because there’s long term benefits as well.
I’m hoping that we can figure these things out. If cities and agencies can figure out how to show progress and get better at resource allocation issues like these, we might find better policies and quality of life all around.
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