Metros Aff 1 Transit 1AC, ob. 1 2
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- Public transit vastly increasing carrying capacity per vehicle- reduces roadway congestion
- Congestion leads to air pollution, economic collapse, and environmental collapse
- Environmental collapse leads to extinction
- Specifically, air pollution leads to extinction
- Econ collapse leads to extinction
- Congestion = Air Pollution
- Public Transportation k to Solve Air Pollution
- Congestion saps economic growth
- Air pollution collapses the health care industry- massive health care costs
- Air pollution kills over two million people every year and causes respiratory infections, heart disease, and lung cancer
- Air pollution causes global acid rain
***HIGHWAYS***Public Transit Solves CongestionPublic transit is key to resolving roadway congestion The National Business Coalition for Rapid Transit ‘3 (November 3, 2003, The National Business Coalition for Rapid Transit, The Economic Importance of Public Transport, http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/documents/economic_importance.pdf) The tremendous growth in traffic congestion means extra costs for business – higher wages and benefits to recruit workers, shorter workdays, increased absenteeism, and greater employee turnover and transportation assistance. Business is recognizing that travel mobility is a key quality of life issue for its labor force.4 Transit provides another economic boost to business by removing autos from the highway system, thereby maintaining roadway capacity for the shipment of goods and material. Public transit vastly increasing carrying capacity per vehicle- reduces roadway congestionSemmens ‘5 [John, economist at the Laissez Faire Institute, June 2005 Does Light Rail Worsen Congestion and Air Quality?, online 2009] Advocates of government subsidies for public transit assert that this should help mitigate urban traffic congestion by replacing many automobile trips with a smaller number of high-occupancy-vehicle trips. In terms of carrying capacity, a bus can serve 15 times as many person-miles per vehicle-mile as a typical automobile. A light-rail train has a carrying capacity about 100 times larger. The prospect of reducing urban traffic congestion by luring would-be automobile drivers onto public transit is thus tantalizing. Congestion Impact WallCongestion leads to air pollution, economic collapse, and environmental collapsePeters ‘9 (Mary P., U.S. Secretary of Transportation, “Critical Relief for Traffic Congestion”, American Public Transportation Association) June 16, 2009 http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/congestion.cfm) As more and more vehicles crowd the nation’s roadways, traffic congestion has an increasingly debilitating effect on our quality of life. Across America, people, business and industry, the economy and the environment pay a higher and higher price for mounting congestion -- through delays, lost opportunities, higher costs, increased accidents, reduced competitiveness, pollution, frustration and much more. The data are clear: Providing fast, affordable, reliable public transportation is essential in blunting the effects of crippling congestion, and providing sustained relief that: Protects personal freedom, choice and mobility Enhances access to opportunity Enables economic prosperity Protects our communities and the natural environment. The longest-running study of traffic congestion in America -- the Urban Mobility Study conducted annually for 19 years by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) -- confirms the trend: on a daily basis, Americans are experiencing longer delays, longer periods of congestion, and the spread of congestion across more and more of the nation’s roadways. This study of 75 urban areas, ranging in size from New York City to areas with 100,000+ population, suggests that traffic congestion will continue to worsen as the number of vehicle miles traveled continues to grow. The data include the following: Each person traveling in peak periods wastes, on average, 62 hours a year -- nearly eight full working days -- in congestion delays.(*1) Urban travelers can now expect to encounter congested roadways during seven hours of the day.(*1) Congestion is becoming more widespread, experienced by nearly 60 percent of urban roadways in 2000.(*1) Congestion is no longer confined to our largest metropolitan areas. As long ago as 1997, two-thirds of peak-period traffic was congested in areas of 500,000 or less. (*2) “Unless we manage highway congestion, our nation will continue to incur economic costs in foregone productivity, wasted fuel, and a reduced quality of life.” Environmental collapse leads to extinctionChakkaravarthy ‘3 (Ashoka, http://www.yorku.ca/bunchmj/ICEH/proceedings/Chakkaravarthy_Q_ICEH_papers_66to74.pdf) The very basis of human survival hinges on the sustainable inter-linkages with the environment. The present day scenario however, tells a different story. The ever-increasing problems due to pollution are leading to various environmental hazards that are detrimental to our survival. In this context, this paper aims to address the various problems vis-a-vis human survival and the steps to be taken up in a concerted fashion towards sustainable development. In future years the population increase will require that the environment of the world be reviewed as a closed system. Consequently, it is necessary to take an ecological approach to environmental quality and consider the totality of the environment with Specifically, air pollution leads to extinctionZayed Prize ‘3 (PG. http://www.zayedprize.org.ae/en/display.aspx?type=news&id=1518) Air pollution is a serious threat to human survival affecting all aspects of life on earth including its socio-economic development. Climatic changes have been on their upswing choking, many urban areas worldwide and theory effecting sustainable development. With Asian brown clouds becoming an important issue in this part of the world. It has been catching media headlines recently. Econ collapse leads to extinctionMead ‘92 [Walter Russel Mead, Senior Fellow in American FoPo @ the Council on Foreign Relations, World Policy Institute, 1992] Hundreds of millions, billions, of people have pinned their hopes on the international market . They and their leaders have embraced market principles and drawn closer to the west because they believe the system can work for them? But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: North against South, rich against poor. Russia, China India, these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to the world than Germany and Japan did in the 30s. Congestion = Air PollutionTraffic congestion leads to massive air pollutionKatz et al. ‘5 Bruce Katz is vice president, director of the Metropolitan Policy Progam, and Adeline M. and Alfred I. Johnson Chair in Urban and Metropolitan Studies at the Brookings Institution. Robert Puentes is a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution. Scott Bernstein is at the Center for Neighborhood Technology. “Getting Transportation Right for Metropolitan America,” Taking the High Road, Brookings Institution Press, p. 26 As congestion increases, air quality continues to worsen in major metropolitan regions. Deteriorating air quality raises serious health concerns that are beginning to recieve a great deal attention. The Bush administration recently acted to modestly increase fuel economy standards for light-duty trucks and sport utility vehicles, and sent confusing signals about conformity with the Clean Air Act in cases scattered from California to Atlanta. At the same time, the Supreme Court, responding to scientific evidence, upheld new air quality standard measurements that better reflect the levels of air pollutants caused by car emissions. As a result, in April 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency designated 474 counties in 31 states out of compliance with the federal air quality standards of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments for smog-causing ozone. Some 150 million people live in these counties. Public Transportation k to Solve Air PollutionPublic transport key to air quality- more than 50% reduction of all dangerous emissionsMillar ‘9, [Bob, President of APTA, http://www.publictransportation.org/facts/#hw07, online 2009, DB] Public transportation reduces pollution and helps promote cleaner air. Public transportation produces 95 percent less carbon monoxide (CO), 90 percent less in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and about half as much carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx), per passenger mile, as private vehicles. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions represent 82 percent of total US human-made greenhouse emissions. By reducing smog-producing pollutants, greenhouse gases and by conserving ecologically sensitive lands and open spaces -- public transportation is helping to meet national air quality standards. Congestion kills econCongestion saps economic growthFrankel et al 09 Emil, Director of Transportation Policy, Joshua Schank, Director of Transportation Research Daniel Lewis, Policy Analyst JayEtta Hecker, Senior Advisor, "Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy," National Transportation Policy Project," 6/9/09 http://bipartisanpolicy.org/events/2009/06/performance-drivena-new-vision-us-transportation-policy, AD 7/2/12 The most salient indicator of an under-performing transport system in many large metropolitan areas is chronic traffic congestion. Congestion delays are a daily frustration for millions of Americans, the vast majority of whom (approximately 90 percent) commute to work by car.62 One study estimated that congestion delays in metropolitan areas add up to more than 4 billion person hours of lost time each year and cost the economy approximately $78 billion.63 Many Americans have no choice but to endure congestion because 45 percent have no available public transportation service options at all, and more still have poor ones.64 In addition to taking a toll on economic productivity and quality of life, congestion impedes the movement of goods in urban areas and drives up costs; it also causes excess fuel consumption and pollution emissions. Health Care ModAir pollution collapses the health care industry- massive health care costsShoock ‘7, [Corey, “Blowing in the Wind”, FORDHAM JOURNAL OF CORPORATE FINANCE AND LAW, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4048/is_200707/ai_n21032683/) Respiratory illness, cancer, neurological disorders, and birth defects caused by fossil fuels cost the country billions of dollars a year.9 These billions of dollars, public health entitlements notwithstanding, represent a mass siphoning of capital that would otherwise, in the form of commerce or workforce participation, contribute to the domestic economy.10 The federal government is clearly complicit in allowing the status quo, for which individual policymakers ought to be ashamed. But more constructive is the fact that the solution is cognizable and can be implemented in a way that solves the mutually reinforcing crises of electricity demand,11 infrastructural antiquation,12 rising energy costs,13 and soaring public and private health care expenses,14 not to mention going a long way toward providing the environment an overdue respite. Air pollution kills over two million people every year and causes respiratory infections, heart disease, and lung cancerENS ‘6, (ENS, Environmental News Service, http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-06-01.asp, October 6, 2006.) Air pollution in cities across the world is causing some two million premature deaths every year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday, urging nations to adopt stricter air pollution standards. The international health agency's new air quality guidelines call for nations to reduce the impact of air pollution by substantially cutting levels of particulate matter, ozone and sulfur dioxide. "By reducing air pollution levels, we can help countries to reduce the global burden of disease from respiratory infections, heart disease, and lung cancer which they otherwise would be facing," said Maria Neira, WHO director of public health and the environment. "Moreover, action to reduce the direct impact of air pollution will also cut emissions of gases which contribute to climate change and provide other health benefits." WHO cautioned that for some cities meeting the targets would require cutting current pollution levels more than three fold. The organization noted that many countries don't have any air pollution standards. Existing standards vary greatly, WHO said, and most fail to ensure sufficient protection of human health. Particulate matter is the major concern, WHO said, and cutting this type of air pollution can produce the greatest health benefits. Produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, particulate matter has been increasingly linked to respiratory illness and heart disease. Air pollution is a major concern for cities worldwide - none moreso than China's Beijing. (Photo by Edwin Ewing, Jr. courtesy CDC) Acid Rain ModAir pollution causes global acid rainMSN Encarta ‘8, (MSN Encarta, Acid Rain, 2006-2008, http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761578185/acid_rain.html) Acid Rain, form of air pollution in which airborne acids produced by electric utility plants and other sources fall to Earth in distant regions. The corrosive nature of acid rain causes widespread damage to the environment. The problem begins with the production of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, natural gas, and oil, and from certain kinds of manufacturing. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react with water and other chemicals in the air to form sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and other pollutants. These acid pollutants reach high into the atmosphere, travel with the wind for hundreds of miles, and eventually return to the ground by way of rain, snow, or fog, and as invisible “dry” forms. Damage from acid rain has been widespread in eastern North America and throughout Europe, and in Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. Acid rain leaches nutrients from soils, slows the growth of trees, and makes lakes uninhabitable for fish and other wildlife. In cities, acid pollutants corrode almost everything they touch, accelerating natural wear and tear on structures such as buildings and statues. Acids combine with other chemicals to form urban smog, which attacks the lungs, causing illness and premature deaths. 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