It’s Uber Important to Get a Lyft and Reduce Traffic

February 24, 2015March 4, 2015 rbradfo

With the rate at which the world is expanding, it’s no surprise that traffic has begun piling up across the globe. In our own city, it usually takes around two hours to travel a 10 mile distance during peak traffic hours — which seems to be any time Monday-Friday and nights on the weekends. Shockingly enough, there are cities with much worse traffic than ours (which we almost refuse to believe, even though the statistics speak for themselves). Traffic may seem like a huge, inevitable headache, but there are plenty of ways you can change your methods of travel that could help lighten traffic!

1. Public Transportation

Public transportation is any form of transportation that is not a personal vehicle, bicycle, or motorcycle. Many cities refer to their public transportation options as “public transit.” In the United States, New York City sees the highest number of public transit users than any other major city. In fact, a study conducted by FiveThirtyEight Data Labs found that New York City has more public transit users than the sixteen other cities with highest volume of public transit users combined. That same study found that a majority of the best public transit systems are located along the Northeast and West coasts, while the worst public transit systems are located in the south, including Texas and Oklahoma. The Midwest has some cities with extremely successful public transit systems (Chicago, Minneapolis, Baltimore, etc.) and others that are not as successful. In this study, public transit included buses, trains, subways, and monorails. Public transit systems do cost money, but the most a passenger will likely have to pay, even in major cities, is less than $10 a day. In our weird city, we turn to Capital Metro for all of our public transit needs. To determine what your cities’ public transit has to offer, simply Google “[your city] public transit system” and you should have no problem finding fees, schedules, and services available in your city.

2. Carpooling

Got a bunch of cool friends? Get together with your work or school buddies and come up with a carpool schedule for the week! Not only is it fun to ride with friends and suffer through the traffic together, carpooling with friends will help reduce the amount of traffic in your city. Think of it this way. You and four of your co-workers all live within five miles of one another. Each morning, you all leave your homes around the same time and arrive to work around the same time. Including yourself, there are now five cars on the road headed towards the same destination at the same time. If yourself and your four co-workers got together and devised a carpool schedule, the five cars on the road each morning has now been reduced to one. While it may not seem like a huge impact, imagine the difference it would make if everyone in your office chose to carpool to work. A company with 50 employees could slash the number of cars being driven to work by 80% if everyone went five to a car. WOW!

3. Other Ride Sharing Options

If carpooling or public transit do not seem like your cup of tea, consider other ride sharing options such as taxi cabs, Uber, or Lyft. All of these ride share options operate under the same basic pretense: you call for a ride, someone arrives to pick you up, you pay based off a base rate + distance + time + tip (and in some cases a safety fee) and you’re at your destination! For the most part, taxis tend to cost a bit more than Uber or Lyft. In our awesome city, Uber costs a bit less than Lyft, but BOTH are cheaper than Yellow Cab. The drivers for Lyft and Uber are required to have a clean driving record to ensure that only the safest drivers are getting you to and from your destination. The wait times for these ride share services tend to be much less time than the wait for a taxi. During peak hours, some ride share services tend to up their prices, so be sure to check the price before you book a car! If you’re interested in finding out if Uber or Lyft are available in your city, just click the links!
Have an interesting way that you’re lowering traffic in your city? Got a traffic nightmare story you just need to vent about? How about a favorite song to listen to while stuck in traffic? Comment below and let us know what’s on your mind!

The head of Texas is feeling a little congested

February 23, 2015March 4, 2015 asoybel

Forbes lists Austin, Texas as the 4th US city with the worst traffic, sandwiched between San Francisco at number 3 and New York at 5. So just how is it that a laid back, eclectic, and fun-loving city like Austin has such an appalling case of congestion? We’re about to get into that.

Coincidentally, Forbes also lists Austin as the fastest growing city in the nation with a population of 1.8 million and a growth rate of 2.8%! This is a heavily weighted factor in our dilemma of traffic jams for a few reasons.

First of all, as stated in this NPR article, Austin has long been a city opposed to growth and industrialization. The liberal atmosphere never allowed for mass growth and therefore, no infrastructure was erected in regards to that sentiment. The article continues stating that this mentality is one of a “If We Don’t Build It, They Won’t Come” idealization. However, this thought process has obviously failed any Austinite that has driven ( if you call 2 mph “driving”) along I-35 around 4:30-6pm. Actually, KXAN states that Austin drivers wasted a sum of 41 total hours stuck in traffic in 2014.

However, there is hope! Gov. Tech. explains the possibility of utilizing crowd sourcing for data on how to better improve traffic lights. This could potentially be a structural answer to the ever-lasting issue of traffic. Ideally, this smart-version of congestion control is something we could see being implemented in the next few years. Another structural solution is that of infrastructure like ideas such as Prop. 1 have proposed. Unfortunately, Austin’s residents seemed to think implementing a railway in a strange location would be an unnecessary waste of tax dollars.

Another phenomenon to observe is the course of housing costs and their correlation with traffic. Various residents often cite having to move complete locations in order to happily commute to work or leisure. Therefore, housing rates increase and make Austin a more expensive place to live.

Each of these occurrences, stemming from Austin’s desire to maintain it’s cool and quirky vibe have consequentially been it’s visible downfall. And unfortunately, if structural answers aren’t put into place, we might see this once lively, peculiar, city become a town full of angry motorists.

Lastly, If there’s one nice thought to have while you’re stuck watching the sunset on the capitol building as the hours go by, it’s that traffic has been shown to have a direct relation with economic health. So if you’re not doing well in the traffic, at least your city is!

I-35 photo by Deborah Cannon

Combating Gentrification

February 20, 2015March 4, 2015 dspiro

Does urban growth automatically mean more gentrification? Not necessarily. Here’s some sure fire ways to avoid gentrification from coming to fruition.

1. More low-income housing!

This one seems almost too obvious of an answer. By making providing low income housing at an equal rate as high cost areas grow, displacement may still happen but at the poorest of a city are not literally losing ground in their city. Making sure that low income housing projects don’t disappear in the future is crucial to preventing gentrification from taking place.

Going back to our previous example of Rosewood Courts. While I agree that the land value of Rosewood has increased in value over the years, that does not given developers the right to tear it down and rebuild for the incoming upper to middle class families, thus displacing the previous residents.

However, there are various programs in place for those who do get displaced or just need low income housing today. The City of Austin has many different programs to choose from, therefore I cannot argue that the displaced residents will automatically become homeless. Most of the problem gentrification brings is the displacement of people from their homes that they’ve lived in for decades.

That being said, according to Roger Valdez from Smart Growth Seattle, neighborhoods have notoriously shifted from wealth to poverty to wealth again within the decades since it’s been around. The process of a changing area is not something new and cannot be solely blamed on gentrification. However, one it becomes to the point that only minorities are being displaced and there are no new low income housing areas to go along with the growth of the city’s wealthy metropolitan area, then that becomes a gentrification problem.

2. Protect existing low income housing areas

Again, this one seems too obvious of answer as well. Protecting existing areas will slow down the process of gentrification and it will keep families in the homes they’ve owned for the last couple of decades. It makes sure that families stay in the areas they want to, regardless of their income. Sadly, there are not many programs out there to help families keep their home as much as ones to help them find a new one. I suggest demanding a program for the families who do not wish to move out of the area so they can keep their home.

For more good reads on the subject, I suggest Kalima Rose’s blog post on Race, Poverty, and Environment.

Gentrification 101

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 sadams7

Before we can begin to talk about the issues that gentrification poses, let’s make sure that we’re on the same page right off the bat. According to the brains at Dictionary.com, gentrification is defined as

“the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses”

If this feels a little familiar, your ‘hood might have a gentrification problem – one of the many Catch 22’s of city population surges. You see, even though property values increase (making certain neighborhoods more appealing) these areas lose diversity, especially considering the minorities that contribute to a multicultural urban lifestyle.

Take Austin, Texas for example. Proud weirdos and counter-culturalists. From 2000-2010, ATX saw it’s population increase by 20.4%, the 3rd fastest growing major city of the decade. Even with all that growth, it was the African-American population that was on the decline. The Austin-American Statesman is doing a brilliant job of covering the phenomena that is at it’s heart an economic and political issue.

When cost of living soars because of the influx of wealthy new Austinites, upper-to-middle class families don’t grumble much especially in comparison to the high-cost areas they are coming from: Los Angeles, San Diego, NYC, Chicago, DC.

from Bloomberg Businessweek

But for minorities (mostly Blacks and Latinos) who don’t make nearly as much per dollar as their white counterparts, they are literally losing ground. All it takes to understand the severity is a drive around East Austin. Verging on derelict mid-century, one-floor family homes with plenty of life and character spilling out of it’s gates is juxtaposed with brand new, modern studio condominiums or under construction artistically architecture’d 3-level town homes that scream “yuppie” (young upwardly mobile professional). But that’s the issue. There is little economic mobility for minorites in Austin, so they are forced out to subsequently booming suburbs like Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Round Rock.

A perfect case-in-point example is the fate of the historic Rosewood Courts. Built as housing for low-income Black families (“projects”) in the 1930s, the Rosewood Courts (located in, you guessed it – East Austin) is on the verge of being mostly razed and rebuilt. The community is rallying behind the preservation cause with petitions and social media campaigns, but will it be enough to fend off the Housing Authority of the City of Austin who has grant money from U.S. Housing and Development?

Politcal graffiti in Austin, Texas

The sense of rallying for cultural inclusion in Austin is apparent in the iamblackaustin campaign. This campaign has goals to address Austin’s racial and cultural divides. According to the Statesman, doing so “might produce the greater payoff in terms of economic mobility… these forces are toughest to pin down [but] they’re often the most important to consider because they coincide so closely with many of the other factors that inhibit opportunity.”

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, REPEAT

February 9, 2015February 17, 2015 rbradfo

The amount of waste the United States produces in a single year is astronomical. According to a study conducted in 2012 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans generated more than 251 million TONS of trash in one year. To put that number into perspective, let’s consider the size of the wise and gentle elephant. One male African elephant can weigh up to eight tons. Therefore, the amount of trash we threw into landfills that year is equivalent to 31,375,000 elephants. PS: That’s more than the entire population of African elephants on the planet — YIKES! With so much trash being produced by us each year, there must be more lucrative solutions to our overflowing landfills. Luckily, some old school hipsters in 1970 kick-started the first Earth Day, which introduced the idea of recycling to the United States.

In the same study conducted in 2012, the EPA found that 87 million tons, or approximately 34% of the trash produced, was recycled waste. While 34% is a much higher number than in previous years, it could still be higher. The EPA recommends a three step system to take control of the waste in your life. These three steps are easy to remember, as they all start with an “r”: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The following image demonstrates how this concept is a constant loop, rather than a one-way model.

The first step in the process, reduce, ties in very closely to the second step, reuse. The EPA suggests that the easiest way to reduce your waste is to create less in the first place. Each time you buy a new plastic water bottle instead of investing in a thermos, new materials must be produced to offset the bottle you’ve just used. Making new materials requires the use of raw materials. These raw materials that are taken from the Earth must be remade and transported. This costs money and transporting the goods burns fuel. Therefore, by reducing the amount of new materials made and reusing materials you already have, you are saving both money and materials. In addition to these benefits, reducing and reusing materials also lowers the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases cause climate change, which contributes to everything from intensified storms to the melting of the polar ice caps. Using products to their fullest extent makes it so that less materials are being made each day, which will not only lower the amount of trash generated, but also lower the amount of recycling generated each year. Although recycling is beneficial to the environment, it is still ideal to reuse as much as possible.

There are a number of ways in which one can strive to lower their waste and increase their reuse of materials. Perhaps the most obvious way to reduce waste is to buy used. There are big name thrift shops, such as Goodwill or The Salvation Army, that offer donated shoes, clothes, furniture, dishes, and virtually every other kind of material for a discounted price. You can also check out thrift shops that are specific to your own city. In our weird and wonderful city, places such as Plato’s Closet, Buffalo Exchange, and Thrift Land offer a vast selection of goods. There are ways in which you can lower the amount of disposable items you use on a daily basis as well. For example, rather than packing your lunch in a paper bag each day, buy a reusable lunch box. Instead of buying a cup of coffee from Starbucks, bring a coffee mug to work and use the community coffee pot. Another way to reduce waste is to buy items with minimal packaging. There is no reason to purchase an item that is wrapped in six layers of cardboard, plastic, or Styrofoam. All these items do is create clutter.

The “big five” items that are recyclable include paper, plastic, cardboard, aluminum, and glass. However, there are plenty of other items, such as food waste and clothing, that can be recycled as well. Most recycling plants will accept the “big five”, but you may need to do a little digging to determine where you can recycle old furniture, electronics, and clothing in your area. The easiest way to recycle is to keep everything sorted that you’ve used. Any department store or more specialty shops, such as The Container Store, will have a number of items (think: RubberMaid) to choose from, depending on how much recycling you incur in a week.

Fun Fact: Goodwill will take any item, even if it is ripped or stained, and send it to a recycling plant if they deem it unfit for resale.

So try this! Each day this week, find something in your life that you can reduce, reuse, or recycle. Whether it’s going to a vintage thrift shop for a weekend shopping trip with your girlfriends, recycling your plastic water and buying a reusable one, or setting up a method for keeping your recyclables separated at your home, you will be doing a big part to not only help the environment, but keep the amount of waste generated by our massive population under control.

Have a cool or interesting way that you’ve been reducing the amount of waste in your life? Comment below and let us know the steps you’re taking to sustain the environment in our ever-growing world!

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

February 9, 2015February 17, 2015 asoybel

Okay, we’re not going to waste your time here *pun seriously intended*. But what we do want to do is talk about waste, and why it’s got us buzzing over here at Pop Pulse! Have you ever checked this out? With all of these people being added to the world on a daily – millisecond – basis, it’s hard to imagine how much waste we actually produce. So we’re going to break it down for y’all!

“Waste and wastes implies unwanted or unusable materials.”

Specifically, if we’re talking about a consumerist, capitalist, market economy, (like that of this glorious nation that we’re based in), we’re speaking in terms of supply and demand. This means that the consumers in the market are making the rules about what is being produced. And naturally, when man is able to pick and choose, the overbearing flaws any system are amounted to human error. In this case, I’ll compare it to the the ” eyes bigger than your stomach” effect.

Now, if you didn’t have grandparents like mine, I’ll break it down for you: Grandma bakes a pumpkin pie, I love pumpkin pie, so I go up and get three slices… Unfortunately my 12 year old stomach can only handle maybe one slice, so the other two contaminated pieces are thrown away (lets pretend my parents weren’t human garbage disposals). With that analogy in mind, it’s easier to understand why so much waste is produced in our country. But just how much waste are we talking? And why should anyone care? Well don’t worry, we’re getting there.

If we’re talking about one person and their day-to-day pumpkin pie struggles, along with product packaging and everything else that produces waste, well they typically produce 4.3 pounds of waste per day. So if we reference that population tallier from earlier, we’ve got about 1376000000 lbs of waste a day in the U.S. given that each individual balances that mass out for each other. That’s 3060 statues of liberty in mass, just for a bit of perspective.

So just where do we put all of that waste? Well, the majority of our nation’s waste is either distributed to landfills, or combusted. The problem with the former, is that we get air pollution and ground water pollution. As we should know by now, humans are a contributor to the issue of greenhouse gases — in particular, methane and carbon dioxide. These gases have harmful effects to the environment and climate. Older landfills that were constructed before recent legal constraints lack liners to prevent chemicals from leaching into the surrounding groundwater – therefore contaminating drinking and crop water. Not to mention, landfills are visually displeasing.

So unless we change something… we obviously have a problem.

Pollution, Prices, and People

February 4, 2015April 20, 2015 sadams7

Let’s face it, day-to-day life feels different. Not in a ‘seasons of life’ or ‘every day is a new day’ cliché kinda way, either. With the exponential growth rate of accessible tech and the increase in violent acts of terrorism, we’re left with national, if not global, feelings of pressure and unease.

We at Pop Pulse believe that population shifts in major cities could be the culprit for all of this tension. I mean, we could just be four women in our early 20s being suffocated by the reign of patriarchy, but that’s a whole other blog entirely. But seriously, our claims are supported by big name media, independent studies, global organizations, etc. We’re in good company on this issue and our goal is to keep you global citizens informed!

Speaking of the folks who could vouch for us, we were initially drawn in by this article at the New York Times.

They cite the United Nations as the source for the projected shifts. Get this – by 2050, two-thirds of humanity will live in cities! That’s information that surely will send your head for a loop. We can only imagine the challenges that will become of future folk. Living in Austin, Texas (called the #1 Market for Millennials by US News) the gals at Pop Pulse have first-hand witnessed the effects of population growth – which is eighth in the nation for rapid growth and expansion, by the way. We’ve seen traffic backed up for hours, construction at every turn, gentrification and a soar in the cost of living.

The Times mentioned other challenges that add to our criticism like disease, schooling, and food production. Can you see why we need to talk about this! We will keep pulse to the population news: citing problems, reactions, and potential resolutions.

What is Population Pulse and why should you care?

February 2, 2015April 20, 2015 dspiro

This blog is brought to you by St. Edward’s students Alex, Debbie, Rebecca, and Sydni. We believe that our world’s rapidly growing overpopulation is a major problem that needs to be addressed. We think we can combat this by spreading awareness of the subject, so feel free to subscribe and share our blog to every one you know!

In this blog, we will discuss why overpopulation matters and how it effects everyone in the planet not just people in dense cities. We will give you tips on how to live life in a crowded city in more sustainable way. Every week our blog will post about a way overpopulation effects the world. We will then give you a solution to that effect in a separate post.

Who are we, you may ask? The four of us are current students at St. Edward’s University taking a class on social media with Dr. Corinne Weisgerber. Our blog is our semester long project focused on the issue of overpopulation. We picked overpopulation as our topic because it is one we are all passionate about because it is an issue that effects everybody.

Overpopulation is a big problem that effects us in ways that most people don’t realize. Population has an effect on us environmentally, sustainability, and socio-economically. Environmental issues include, but are not limited to, pollution, overcrowding, and deforestation. Sustainability issues include over consumption of natural resources like natural gas, coal, and oil. Socio-economic issues include urbanization and poverty.

Over the next few months, we will go in depth on how you can help combat the world’s overpopulation problem. Every little thing you do to help will be a push in the right direction. If you have any blog ideas or concerns, feel free to comment down below and we will address it as soon as possible. Thank you for visiting our blog today!