The antidote to COVID-19 and #StayHome: ruthless efficiency

Silver Spring's Denizens Brewing, on its last day open before COVID-19 forced it to suspend in-taproom service. (Photo by me)

Our inefficient, spin-filled society gave coronavirus the upper hand on us.

Overcoming this setback will require a thoughtful, but ruthless efficiency. This efficiency will not solve the world’s problems. But it will flatten the curve and get our lives back on track.

But before I get into that, the fun part: spinning the virus into an argument for sustainable mobility and urbanism.

Coronavirus isn't the only disease that can jump from animals to humans. Sprawl-induced habitat destruction will cause more such diseases to mutate and spread interpersonally. (Photo by me)

To start with, the health consequences of car driving cause and exacerbate the underlying health conditions that make COVID-19 more lethal. Studies have found that coronavirus mortality rates are higher in places with more polluted air, a finding linked to both the well-known health effects of the pollution and the possibility that particulate matter may bolster the virus’s ability to spread. And traffic violence drains healthcare resources needed to treat COVID patients, especially now that pandemic-emptied roads are encouraging drivers to speed.

Those, however, are the least scary stories to tell.

There’s solid evidence that auto-dependent sprawl infringing on natural habitats will allow more novel animal diseases like COVID-19 to mutate and gain the ability to spread from person to person. For example, though a recent rumor to this effect was false, imagine if something like the deer mouse hantavirus that infected 10 people at Yosemite National Park in 2012 – which takes up to 6 weeks to incubate and kills 36 percent of its human hosts, making the coronavirus look like a second-division bug – really could, with no warning, jump between people. As if there weren’t already enough reason for people in my home state of California to fear the wildland-urban interface, with the wildfire threat it poses.

Furthermore, as permafrost melts due to climate change, get ready for all kinds of viruses and bacteria to emerge from the ice and encounter the path to non-immune humans that they’ve awaited for ages. For example, a 2016 anthrax outbreak in Siberia stemming from a formerly permafrost-encased reindeer corpse killed a 12-year-old boy and hospitalized 70 other people, while melting of Neanderthal remains could give ancient pandemics that ravaged our proto-human relatives a chance to defend their title against us homo sapiens.

    

So shouldn’t we just do away with automobiles – the biggest contributor to the biggest source of U.S. greenhouse gases: transportation emissions – and build walkways, bikeways, busways, subways, and high-speed railways to everywhere, all funded to operate at frequent headways, while we still can?

In the early days of COVID-19, one vision of the post-pandemic future was on display. (Photo by me) 

There’s a big problem, however: just as I can publish the above position with the click of a button, auto and oil interests can spin the virus into a case against urbanism.

For example, the National Review recently published a piece claiming that COVID-19 is reminding us how terrible cities are, singling out transit systems and transit-oriented development specifically as pandemic catalysts. The article goes on to list terrorist attacks and chaotic hurricane evacuations as other problems that auto-dependency, suburban office parks, and single-family zoning are apparently the solution for.  

Shredding the National Review’s article to bits would be simple and satisfying. I wrote previously about how auto-dependency makes natural disasters and the evacuations preceding them more deadly, for example, and could list the many mass shootings that – if not perpetrated while driving – have taken place at suburban schools, workplaces, and big-box stores.

But would this really get us anywhere? I’m not going to change their view, and they’re not going to change mine. I can convince myself that they’re formulaic naysayers while I’m speaking for the experience-based greater good, but in the end, the subpar policy responsible for our mutual dissatisfaction won’t change.

An empty Cleveland Park Metro station in DC, on one of the last days before the station closed as part of WMATA's COVID-19 management. None of Seoul's subway stations have closed during the pandemic. (Photo by me) 

This never-ending cycle of negativity constitutes oppressive inefficiency. It was similar inefficiency – from authoritarian China and theocratic Iran to socialist Europe and the capitalist U.S. – that led people and their leaders to put their heads in the sand and allow COVID-19 to spread until it was too late to avert a health, economic, and quality-of-life catastrophe.

This all has me thinking back to an article I posted a prehistoric month-and-a-half ago, about the role of Seoul’s transit system in the Oscar-winning film Parasite. The film’s wealthy couple – facultative parasites, in contrast to obligate coronavirus – make classist remarks about their city’s subway and the people who use it. I concluded that the couple’s disrespect for the impeccable system underlying their economic success represents a flaw in the human condition.

In that article, written in the early days of Wuhan’s lockdown, I also suggested that a sudden calamity could be what’s needed for our species to evolve past this flaw.

If COVID-19 is that predicted calamity, Korean society’s structure – with ruthless efficiency underlying stark class divides – has proven not the problem, but the answer.

No, the peninsula hasn’t fixed its figurative or literal divides overnight. In the south, kids are set to begin their school year of 16-hour days (albeit remotely) in hopes of getting a shot at a coveted position serving Chaebol oligarchs; people who miss out on that white-collar dream face stifling “Hell Joseon” realities. And courtesy of that guy up north, missiles still fly above it all.

But South Korea got things done as the virus closed in. The country took aggressive, arguably invasive, but absolutely needed measures to identify and isolate people who have or were exposed to COVID-19. Though sporting events and K-Pop concerts might be on hold for now, as a result of these measures people can sustain relatively normal daily lives, exercising outside or riding transit – with sanitized confidence that their stations will be open and their buses will show up – without facing public shame. 

A consequence of oppressive inefficiency. (Photo by me)

Sadly, it’s too late for the U.S. to overcome its oppressive inefficiency and experience a quick return to normalcy. But a pivot to ruthless efficiency could lift us personally and societally, making the pandemic more survivable and tolerable for not just the transit industry, but us all.

At the industry level, as tempting as it may seem we’re not going to efficiently unravel the social engineering that’s given us decades of car culture and road expansions. Nor are transit agencies going to efficiently flatten the COVID-19 curve by themselves.

But we can be ready to efficiently respond to changing transportation behavior as the outbreak continues and eventually eases. Among things to consider as we move towards the aftermath:

1. People may continue working from home in increased numbers, leading to more localized travel patterns than those pre-COVID, or may return to commuting to central offices.
2. When mandated social distancing ends we may rush out on the town en masse, our stir-craziness giving way to increased mobility demand, or we may continue to stay in more because our own finances and the businesses we patronize are slow to recover.
3. People’s perceptions of health and safety on transit vehicles may be unchanged or reassured, or they may fear that they’ll catch an illness on a bus or train, leading to the possibility of reduced ridership amidst worse traffic.
4. Regarding active transportation, people may continue to bike and walk more, having grown more comfortable with these options and developed a renewed appreciation for the outdoors, or they may revert to their old habits as gyms reopen and life in general becomes less stressful.

The agencies and organizations that manage our roads, transit systems, and bikeshare programs must be prepared to move the public under any and every combination of these four scenarios.

But looking back at that National Review article, certain behavioral outcomes of the four scenarios seem universally preferable:

1. The article posits that smaller-scale communities would alleviate stress and congestion in today’s monocentric metro areas. Such communities, in which more people work at or nearer to their homes, are by definition mixed-use and facilitate more polycentric, less peaked mobility. Thus, it’s relatively easy and cheap to connect these communities by transit.
2. Everyone wants a better economy; people and the markets earn more when businesses bustle and money flows in.  Our coronavirus-era pivot to hoarding and delivery has had the opposite effect, and things will get worse the longer this hub-and-spoke pattern lasts. This helps explain the article’s admission that dense, collaborative cities – with their spillover effects and economies of scale – have to date served as the globe’s primary hubs for productivity and innovation.
3. People who ride transit – and by people, I mean anyone who needs or wants to get somewhere – prefer that their buses and trains are spotless and don’t have any desire to fall ill when they ride. And no one – not even the writers of that article, who opine about awful car commutes – likes traffic, regardless of their chosen transportation mode.
4. People have always liked going out and getting fresh air, even if coronavirus is making them appreciate that air a little more. The article advocates specifically for walkable neighborhoods, for example.

So, we’ve identified some achievable efficiency goals: compact, connected activity hubs; an open, vibrant economy; safe, reliable mobility; and space to enjoy the outdoors. Now, how can we achieve these goals?

Focusing on activities within our control, like socially-distanced walks in Rock Creek Park, is a way to maximize efficiency during COVID-19. (Photo by me)

During this time of isolation, perhaps the best strategy is focusing on the one thing we can control: our own personal efficiency. 

   

We can start by just doing things that make sense. If you have the option to walk to local grocery stores and takeout places instead of driving to Costco or Walmart, do it. If you see an opportunity to benefit your community or just do someone a favor, take advantage. And if you’re not literally sick, but are sick of being inside, step outside for a while – just be sure to stay at least six feet from others.

Because by using our time more efficiently, we’ll set the stage for a more functional post-pandemic society.