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Producers Fae Moore and Tom McNamara, editor David Kreger and special correspondent John Larson for Blueprint America

JOHN LARSON:
27-year-old Nimia Larcia lives in a suburban housing complex just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She moved here from Honduras six years ago in search of a better life.

Suburban America used to be synonymous with good living, not the least of which was because its streets were so much safer than those in the city. Not anymore.

Every morning when Nimia walks from her apartment to her minimum-wage job at a jewelry store, she has to cross one of the most dangerous roads in Georgia: Buford Highway. People in cars race back and forth, many if not most exceeding the 45 mile per hour speed limit.

For people on foot, it is seven lanes of fear.

NIMIA LARCIA:
Sometimes I am scared, but I have to do.

JOHN LARSON:
Nimia Larcia and suburban America represent what is more and more becoming a great American mismatch. Communities like hers were built for people with cars.

The problem is many here can’t afford cars. And so these areas by design have become lethal for far too many people.

REPORTER 1:
…a five year old girl killed. Her older sister seriously injured.

REPORTER 2:
Police say a man was hit at Buford highway and Dresden around 2 o’clock this morning. His body was then dragged nearly two miles to Buford and Afton lane…

REPORTER 3:
The number of injuries and fatalities along Buford Highway is three times higher than any other road in the state.

JOHN LARSON:
Technically this person, by law, is supposed to stop, right?

MICHAEL ORTA:
Yeah, this guy’s supposed to stop. But he’s not.

JOHN LARSON:
Michael Orta works for PEDS, an organization that’s trying to improve pedestrian safety in and around Atlanta.

MICHAEL ORTA:
Buford Highway is just a posterchild for this issue. There are tons of roadways out there just like this.

JOHN LARSON:
The state acknowledges that fully eight of Buford Highway’s 30 miles are hazardous for pedestrians. And roads just like it can be found in nearly every state in the country.

According to a recent report, by two national transportation groups, about 43 thousand pedestrians were killed in the U.S. in the last decade; “the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month.”

Nearly 30 of them died right here on Buford Highway. At least 250 more were injured.

MICHAEL ORTA:
This is a typical Buford Highway bus stop here. It’s just a pole in the dirt right next to the roadway, just a few feet away. I wouldn’t want to have my kids here. A lot of people wait up here, they’re got little rocks so they can sit up on the hill.

JOHN LARSON:
So that’s like the bus stop up here?

MICHAEL ORTA:
Yeah, kind of. People sit up here on the hill.

JOHN LARSON:
Demand for transportation is so high here that taxis, freelance car services and private buses race down these roads competing for customers with the public transit system, often using the very same stops.

People rushing to and from buses account for one in four of the accidents here.

MICHAEL ORTA:
This girl just got off at the stop like anyone else would, and she needs to get across the street. Of course, she’s going to do what most people do which is wait for a gap in traffic this way, stop in the middle suicide lane. And then wait for a gap in the other half of the road.

JOHN LARSON:
Plus, it’s right behind a hill.

MICHAEL ORTA:
It’s really bad visibility. I mean, drivers can really see folks here.

JOHN LARSON:
Orta says long stretches of the road don’t have enough crosswalks or stoplights for pedestrians. In some places they’re spaced a mile apart.

Could you say to these people, “Listen, we know the crosswalk is a long way down the road, but your life is in danger here, so walk to the crosswalk, you know, go the extra half mile. Whatever it is.”

MICHAEL ORTA:
Forget it. You can’t tell people to walk a half mile to a crosswalk. You wouldn’t do it. The police officers wouldn’t do it. Nobody does that.

JOHN LARSON:
Ellen Dunham-Jones is a Professor of urban design at Georgia Tech, and co-author of a book called “Retrofitting Suburbia.”

Dunham-Jones says suburban communities across the nation need a major re-think.

ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES:
The stereotypes that we’ve held about who is in the cities and who is in the suburbs have started to change. And change really quite dramatically.

JOHN LARSON:
Immigration, the recession, and other economic realities have all contributed to a remarkable trend. For the first time in history there are more people living in poverty in the suburbs than in the cities. In Atlanta, 85 percent of low income people now live in places like this. But the suburban mismatch is not just about the poor.

ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES:
Basically, the baby boomers are the generation who really built most of the suburbs. But they’ve built an environment that is not going to allow them to age in place very gracefully.

JOHN LARSON:
Demographers are warning that millions of older Americans living in car dependent communities could be left isolated, unable even to get to the grocery store. Dunham-Jones is hoping the country will design its way out of these problems. Even Buford Highway, she says, could be transformed with medians, trees and buildings set closer to the road. Changes that are known to slow traffic. But outside of the ivory tower, change does not come easily. Or quickly.

Last year Georgia spent more than two billion dollars on transportation, but only a tiny fraction, less than 1 percent, went specifically to pedestrian safety.

JOHN KING:
Look at this. This right here is just– this is what makes me cringe as Police Chief. “Senora, por favor tenga cuidado!”

JOHN LARSON:
Doraville Police Chief John King has spent nearly a decade asking the state highway department for help.

JOHN KING:
We’ve been at this for years now. Every chief of police almost in this country is a type-A personality. We see a problem, we want to fix a problem.

JOHN LARSON:
King and his allies got some action back in 2007, when the state installed four sets of crosswalks and pedestrian-activated lights on a one-mile stretch of Buford Highway.

The problem was they didn’t always work.

REPORTER 4:
We tested the cross walks… Pushed button after button after button –

JOHN LARSON:
Recently new lights were installed to replace the broken ones. But as of today, they still haven’t been turned on.

While we were in town part of Buford Highway buckled in a heat wave.

REPORTER 5:
Driver after driver was forced to turn around after a 42-foot section of Buford Highway bubbled up two feet.

FEMALE DRIVER:
That’s nuts!

JOHN LARSON
State crews fixed that problem over night. But there are no overnight fixes for pedestrians, says Kathy Zahul, Traffic Engineer for Georgia’s Transportation Department. Reconfiguring an infrastructure built for cars, she says, means untangling decades of bureaucracy. So much so, that even a simple question turns out not to be.

Why don’t you just lower the speed on Buford Highway?

KATHY ZAHUL:
Nationally, it’s accepted that the appropriate speed limit for any route is around 80– where 85 percent of the population is comfortable driving.

JOHN LARSON:
So basically it says the people driving the cars set the speed limit. I mean I know that’s not exactly right, but that’s what you’re saying?

KATHY ZAHUL:
Well, they set the operating speed.

JOHN LARSON:
In this type of situation where the issues really have become pedestrian oriented, couldn’t that be rethought?

KATHY ZAHUL:
Well, by law, um, Georgia Department of Transportation is required to set the speed limit on all routes in the state at the maximum reasonable and safe speed.

JOHN LARSON:
It’s a catch-22 that drives pedestrian advocates nuts.

MICHAEL ORTA:
It’s horrible. It’s horrible. They can’t just lower the speed limit. They have to go out and make design changes to the road that would force people to drive slower and then be able to justify that they’re lowering the speed limit because these design changes made people drive slower.

JOHN LARSON:
Zahul showed us plans for some design changes that are in the works. But the transportation department says construction won’t start until 2012.

So, according to the plans on the books at least, eventually the rest of Buford Highway will have sidewalks?

KATHY ZAHUL:
Yes.

JOHN LARSON:
And eventually there’ll be more crossing, safe crossing areas?

KATHY ZAHUL:
Absolutely.

JOHN LARSON:
And the only question really is, is how long is eventually?

KATHY ZAHUL:
Correct.

For more on Blueprint America’s coverage of Detroit, watch “Beyond the Motor City.”

Blueprint America examines how Detroit, a symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America.

Detroit is the crucible in which the nation’s ability to move toward a modern 21st century transportation infrastructure is put to the test. The documentary shows how investments in the past — beginning with the construction of canals in the 18th century — profoundly shaped Detroit’s physical layout, population growth and economic development. Before being dubbed the Motor City, Detroit was once home to the nation’s most extensive streetcar system. In fact, it was that vast network of streetcars that carried workers to the area’s many car factories. And it was the cars made in those factories that would soon displace the streetcars in Detroit — and in every major American city.

Detroit’s engineers went on to design the nation’s first urban freeways and inspired much of America’s 20th century transportation infrastructure system — from traffic signals to gas stations — that became the envy of the word.

But over the last 30 years, much of the world has moved on, choosing faster, cleaner, more modern transportation and leaving America — and Detroit — behind. Viewers are taken on a journey beyond Detroit’s blighted urban landscape to Spain, home to one of the world’s most modern and extensive transit systems; to California, where voters recently said yes to America’s first high speed rail system; and to Washington, where Congress will soon decide whether to finally push America’s transportation into the 21st century.

Even before President Barack Obama set aside $8 billion in federal stimulus funds last year for high-speed rail projects nationally, California voters in 2008 had already approved a $10 billion bond measure to begin construction of a statewide high-speed train network. California’s High-Speed Rail Authority is responsible for planning, constructing and operating a high-speed train system serving California’s major metropolitan areas.

Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City (Feb. 8 at 10 pm) follows several members of the California High-Speed Rail Authority to Spain, where they tour that nation’s extensive high speed rail

Visalia, California || photo:  Amtrak California

system and learn about the challenges they face as they try to get the first American trains up and running — from Los Angeles to San Francisco — by the end of the decade.

In addition to connecting California’s key cities — San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento — high-speed rail will link some 20 smaller cities throughout the state. Leaders from many of those communities lobbied to get a train stop placed locally. The potential for the trains to link local economies to state and regional economies drove those efforts — and no one wanted to be passed by.

The agricultural community of Visalia – located 44 miles south of Fresno and nearly the midpoint between Sacramento and Los Angeles – was one such city.

Blueprint America followed Mayor Jesus Gamboa as he lobbied the California High-Speed Rail Authority for a train stop for Visalia.

High-speed rail in California, in addition to connecting the state’s major cities, will link some 20 smaller cities to the industries and economies of those larger centers. And as train stops were determined, no one wanted to be passed by.

Blueprint America followed Mayor Jesus Gamboa as he lobbied the California High-Speed Rail Authority for a train stop for the city of Visalia. /wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2010/01/200×100mayorjesusgamboa.3.jpg ]]> http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-next-american-system/video-the-stop-at-visalia/879/feed/ 6 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-next-american-system/video-the-power-house/911/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-next-american-system/video-the-power-house/911/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:18:07 +0000 tom mcnamara http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=911 View full post to see video)

Nearly one-third of the land is unused, and some 80,000 homes are vacant. In documenting the Great Recession, few images are used more than those of a broken down Detroit — a city built for two million people, now home to half that number. Still, the departure of 1 million residents did not happen yesterday, or even in the past decade. People started leaving Detroit in the 1950s when Detroit’s auto industry started its slow decline — fewer jobs, racial violence, drug wars and a series of other problems has kept the city spiraling downward.

The Motor City, though, has not been forgotten. In addition to the recent bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, the federal government in 2008 invested $18.4 billion in the city and the surrounding county. Still, the city is treading water. Locally, however, there is a whole host of people — some with grand schemes, others with more modest notions — who will not give up on the city.

PROJECT POWER HOUSE

Nearly five years ago, Mitch Cope and his wife, Gina Reichert, bought a modest house on Detroit’s north side. The working class neighborhood has not changed much since the 1920s, except that it is rundown — some houses are unoccupied and many have been foreclosed on.

Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert || Read the [POWER HOUSE REPORT]

Mitch and Gina, however, see potential. Recently, the couple purchased a second house down the street — for $1,900. It’s a fixer-upper they call the “Power House.” Their goal is to make the house a model for “off the grid” power generation. They are planning to hook the house up to solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Right now they only have three light bulbs going, but, eventually, they hope the house will be an electrical “source” for neighboring homes.

Still, just to take the house off the grid, will require an investment of some $60,000 (but, remember, they did pay $1,900 for the house).

While the Power House may not be the answer to turning around Detroit, it is representative of the potential within the city.

Sources: Brookings

/wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2010/01/house-2.200×100.jpg In documenting the Great Rescission, not many images are used more than those of a broken down Detroit. A city hit even harder by the financial struggles of the big three automobile companies, it has emptied — built for 2 million people, it now has half that number. Nearly one-third of the land is unused, and some 80,000 homes are vacant. Still, one local couple sees potential. They are building the ‘Power House’. ]]>

A panel discussion with Richard Baron, Matthew Cullen and Toni Griffin, moderated by Blueprint America correspondent Miles O’Brien. And closing comments by Rip Rapson from the Kresge Foundation.

Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City examines how Detroit, a symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America. The film debuts nationally on PBS on February 8 at 10 pm (check local listings).

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormons — are building an enormous new downtown development of high end shops, condos, and offices. But this is not being done with stimulus money, or even one cent of local taxpayers’ money. This project, known as City Creek Center, is funded entirely by the Mormons and their development partners. Is that emphasis on wealth and consumerism compatible with Mormon values of modesty and thrift? Does it leave any room for the poor, or for the variety that helps make up vibrant city life?

Religion & Ethics Correspondent Lucky Severson  reports from Salt Lake City. Read the transcript of this report at the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly website.

CORRECTION: This report originally stated that the Mormon Church “develop[ed] two downtown malls on land across from Temple Square.” In fact, while the Church did develop the ZCMI Center, Crossroads Plaza was developed by Crossroads Plaza Associates, an investor group not affiliated with the Church. The Church acquired Crossroads Plaza in 2003.

The Bay Bridge in the San Francisco-Oakland area was closed last night after a crossbar and two steel tie rods fell from a section repaired last month, damaging three vehicles and causing minor injuries to one driver. Structural engineers and inspectors are working to determine how long repairs will take.

NOW on PBS host — and Blueprint America collaborator — David Brancaccio will be a guest on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the incident and the overall state of America’s infrastructure (Live: Wednesday, October 28 at 9:25 pm EST).

* * *
In a report from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, political wrangling can often get in the way of critical infrastructure improvements Case in point: The rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Originally aired: September 29, 2009

Blueprint America — with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — in a story on how America’s highways are built and funded — often times at the expense of mass-transit development. Correspondent Rick Karr reports from Birmingham, Alabama.

What’s a Zombie Highway?
Rick Karr, Blueprint America correspondent

Let me answer that question with a hypothetical: Let’s pretend that the federal government has a program to help you improve your house or apartment. Lawmakers in Washington promise that for every dollar that you put up for construction, they’ll give you four dollars. It doesn’t matter how expensive the project turns out to be –- you’ll get four bucks in subsidies for every dollar that comes out of your own pocket. Until the project is finished.

In that case, would you ever have an incentive to finish your home improvement project? Or would the project keep shambling forward, like an extra in a George Romero film?

In the most recent Blueprint America piece for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, we report on a highway program that reform advocates say works exactly like the home improvement scenario.

The Appalachian Development Highway System was authorized by President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. The idea was to help nine Appalachian states build about 2,300 miles of highways to improve economic conditions in some of the poorest parts of the country. The federal government agreed to put up four dollars for every dollar the states would spend.

Forty-five years later, the program has expanded to 13 states, and more than 3,000 miles –- and counting. As environmental lawyer and highway-funding reform advocate David Burwell told us, under the system –- known as “cost-to-complete” –- states have an incentive to add more and more highways to the program, build them as expensively as possible –- and never finish them, because doing so would “turn off that federal spigot of money.”

Our case study is one of the newest additions to the Appalachian system: Birmingham, Alabama’s proposed Northern Beltline, a 52-mile stretch of interstate that would wind through the hills north of the city. The cost to taxpayers would be at least $3.327 billion dollars. The State of Alabama would put up its share of $665 million, while taxpayers from the other 49 states and the District of Columbia would cover the lion’s share of the remaining $2.662 billion.

Advocates for the highway say Birmingham needs it to boost economic development. They point to the growth that sprung up along the city’s southern beltline. They also argue that the new road would speed traffic through the region.

Opponents look at the growth along the southern beltline with horror, and argue that it’s exactly the opposite of what Birmingham needs. “We have built enough Interstates to kill our inner cities,” says Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford. “We don’t need more interstates. We’re going to need high speed public transportation. But we’re always spending our money in the wrong places.”