Suburban+Development

Since the integration of the car in the modern United States family, cities and towns have been on a trend in which developing necessities, such as grocery and clothing stores, and neighborhoods are being separated by larger and busier roads which essentially require cars to travel to and from. Furthermore, as more families begin to move into these towns and cities, rather than building new and smaller towns and stores centralized around a smaller town of shops, neighborhoods continue to expand outwards from larger towns, furthering the reliance on cars as public transportation and walking becomes obsolete. This trend is most noticeable in smaller developing or college towns in which, as the college expands and adds new schools, the need for new personnel arises and the town responds to demands by adding new neighborhoods. For the majority of smaller towns, the trend for United States towns is becoming relatable through the effect of the sociological need of people, especially families, wanting more and more land but wanting to keep making a large salary. This is reflective in suburban developments with large plots of land being constructed outside of the town by at least five to ten miles. The expansion of towns in this manner results in an increased reliance on automobiles, and while public transportation is a valid option, as roads continue to be streamlined, public transportation and modes of pedestrian transportation begin to be overlooked, and without proper funding are left in the dust, further developing a reliance on the automobile. Furthermore, neighborhoods are developed faster than the roads connecting them to the towns can be maintained to facilitate public transportation. In the State College example, the Interstate-99 corridor began construction in 1995 and ended in 2007, making the previously primary US-220 route to Stormstown obsolete except for commuters. About halfway through the I-99 construction, the neighborhood of Grays Woods, Stormstown went up, which increased the population by nearly 50%. After completion of the I-99 corridor, the Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) transit system responded by adding a bus line using the old US-220 route, mainly for commuting Penn State students. Still, as seen in the graphic, the majority of commuters use cars for individual transportation. The reason for this can be speculated due to the major sociological factor in these cases. The most widely accepted reason is that people are uncomfortable travelling with other people due to trust, personality traits, and simply need for personal space. For the fiscal year of 2009, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation allocated about 1.1 million of a 6.6 million dollar budget to mass transit, 1.5 million on highway maintenance and 2.3 million on highway and bridge improvement, and about 700,000 of the budget went unused. According to a 2012 model, the cost to construct a new twelve foot multipurpose lane varies from 250,000 to 1 million dollars per mile depending on the use of the lane; shared bike and pedestrian to highway lanes. Also, Carpool sites are growing in popularity in larger cities, such as San Francisco and Pittsburgh. eRideShare.com opened business in 1999 and provides drivers wishing to carpool options for daily carpools, cross country carpools and leisure carpools. The site, however only has a total of 13,500 different route selections, total across the United States, which reflects the sociological impact of sharing commutes. Thus, in order to rectify this situation, the most cost effective and least detrimental to the familiarity of everyday life is the implementation of a shared bus and carpooling lane incorporated into suburban development. Furthermore, an incentive system similar to cities and business incentives and decentives could be implemented such as a higher tax rate for cars living further than a set distance away from a town and incentives such as discounted transit rides based on distance from the town. Larger cities are implementing a similar ideology in which traffic coordination is beginning to favor walking as opposed to driving, making transportation easier for the walking population. Larger cities have also responded to higher population demands by continuing on a century-old tradition of building up rather than out.
 * TOWN EXPANSION AND PUBLIC TRANSIT**

“Budget Information.” //2009 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Annual Report.// Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Publication 409. 2009. Print. erideshare.com. 1999-2011. Website. < [|www.erideshare.com] > 16 Sep 2012. “Pennsylvania.” city-data.com. Onboard Informatics, Advameg, Inc. 2003-2011. Website.< www.city-data.com/city/Pennsylvania.html> 16 Sep 2012. “Pennsylvania Average Commute Time by County.” Index Mundi. Website. < http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/pennsylvania/average-commute-time#map> 16 Sep 2012. Pushkarev, Boris and Jeffrey Zupan. “Demand for Transit: The Role of the Density of Development.” //Public Transportation and Land Use Policy//. Bloominton: Indiana UP, 1977. 24-120. Print.
 * WORKS CITED**