Alabama currently ranks 50th out of all U.S. states in public transportation use per resident, according to U.S. News and World Report, lacking funding ever since a 1952 amendment to the Alabama constitution that prevented gas taxes from being used on transportation.
The state’s lack of funding has led some groups, like the Alabama Urbanists Coalition, which works to make in-state public transit safer and more accessible and cities more pedestrian-focused and walkable, to argue for better urban design and public transportation, including on the UA campus.
Cannon Williams, a sophomore civil engineering major, is the head of the Tuscaloosa Chapter of the Alabama Urbanists Coalition.
Williams said that as a cyclist, he recognizes certain flaws in the campus’ design, like how bike lanes seem to stop suddenly, forcing him to have to merge into traffic. He said he has been honked at before for doing so.
Zane Davis, Tuscaloosa transportation planning director for the West Alabama Regional Commission, said in early September that the city will add bike and pedestrian lanes to upcoming road projects, including those on Main Avenue, 5th street, and a section of University Boulevard. These lanes will help to make biking more accessible, helping reduce car use, Davis said.
Though the Urbanists Coalition was not directly involved in this policy, Williams said these are the sorts of policies the Coalition is looking to support.
“It would be a dream to not have to own a car,” Williams said, adding that he, along with many other students, realizes that’s currently unrealistic.
A lack of car dependency and improved public transportation would benefit students by cutting the routine costs for gas and maintenance as well as the hundreds of dollars a year students must pay for a parking pass, Williams said.
Courtney Stringer, a sophomore accounting major, consistently uses the Crimson Ride, the University’s only accessible form of free public transportation.
“For the most part, it’s okay,” Stringer said of riding the Crimson Ride. “I think the negative part of it … is the app, Passio GO! It’s not user-friendly at all. It’s really hard to figure out which bus is coming and where it’s going to go.”
She suggested teaching incoming freshmen how to use the app during Bama Bound orientation or improving the user interface to avoid the need for training.
Stringer said the residential routes around campus “aren’t helpful at all” because of how unclear it is where they stop.
The absence of convenient, easy-to-use public transportation is severely affecting the campus streets, Williams said, adding that while driving will always be easier, the University could reduce traffic by making public transportation similarly convenient.
Williams suggested that spaces currently taken up by cars and roads could be better used for areas more beneficial to students. He says this is the central philosophy of urbanism.
“It’s about building a community built around people – not around cars, not around businesses,” he said.
Despite the upsides Williams sees in public transportation, funding is low in Alabama.
Daniel Christiansen, the chair of the Alabama Urbanists Coalition, said Alabama has found itself in a cycle of inadequate funding.
Federal programs only subsidize public transportation systems and infrastructure that state governments actively fund. Alabama isn’t investing as much money as many other states in its public transportation, spending less than 12$ per person on transit in 2021, compared to New York’s over $200.
Alabama now finds itself lagging in federal funding compared to other states that made that investment long ago. Transportation for America rated Alabama the lowest of any state on its transit report card based on several factors, such as per capita spending, accessibility and miles driven via public transit.
In 2018, the state created the Alabama Public Transportation Trust Fund to create a strong investment, but no funding has been put in this trust.
Beyond public transportation, Christiansen said prioritizing pedestrians will make roads safer.
He pointed to what he called a “paradox of safety”: Boxers are more likely to kill their opponents with gloves on than without gloves. Similarly, humans are more likely to take larger risks when they feel safer.
When the campus paves out miles of long, wide lanes for cars with often minimal sidewalks or bike lanes next to them and a large room for error, drivers feel as if they can go as fast as they want, Christiansen said. He suggested not implementing harsher speed limits, but rather smarter design.
“The streets need to be pedestrian-first, pedestrian focused … good design that self-enforces the speed limits,” he said. “So as [drivers] approach the speed limit, it feels uncomfortable to go faster.” He added that rather than police enforcement, streets should have a natural speed limit that is best for the safety of drivers and pedestrians.
To accomplish this natural speed limit, Christiansen suggested designers could narrow lanes, put trees on the sides of the roads — which would also give pedestrians shade — and implement chicanes, or artificially placed curves in the road, so drivers cannot speed straight down roads and must navigate them more carefully.
However, Christiansen noted that improving traffic flow should not be a goal of urban design, but an effect, and that people should be the priority.
Christiansen also said that improved, pedestrian-centered design would not only benefit students, but the University and the state of Alabama as a whole.
“Economically, Alabama suffers from brain drain because people at Alabama, UAB, Auburn, don’t necessarily want to stick around in the state if it means living in a place where they have to commute an hour on the highway,” he said, referencing the trend in which highly trained and educated people emigrate from a geographic area. “They’ve got the skills to go other places, so they will.”
The benefits of people-focused urban design would extend to public health as well, Williams and Christiansen both said.
“If 20 people drive their cars to school, and you put those 20 people on a bus… the amount of [carbon] emissions just drops down so much,” Williams said. Christiansen added that if people walk more, that will then decrease rates of obesity, heart disease and other public health risks.
Christiansen said the Alabama Urbanists Coalition is looking to improve cities with initiatives like the Right Size Parking Initiative in Birmingham. This removed previous requirements for a mandatory number of parking spaces for every building.
“Research shows that removing parking mandates lowers the cost of housing production and encourages the development of more affordable and workforce housing for residents,” the city said in a press release. “Reducing the amount of paved spaces also helps to reduce its heating effects on the environment and its contribution to flooding issues.”
As part of President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Alabama is receiving $402 million of federal funding over the next five years to help improve public transit in the state.
“America wasn’t built on cars; it was destroyed for the car,” Christiansen said, insisting that changes must come at a local level, “street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood.”
